How to cook perfect garlic bread

garlic bread is made like fine art,with a lot of imagination,....I rub a fresh clove on the bread,lightly toast,then butter,then brown under the broiler. I've also made garlic/herb butter,which worked well, but my current fav is rustic Italian bread,and garlic infused olive oil, covered with asiago, dipping and toasting methods both work; dipping w/antipasti, toasting with sauced courses (to push- - you know)and just bread alone to "sop"

Food for thought.

Never met a garlic bread I didn't like.

Good morning gentlemen!
 
LOT...................your 1:17................absolutley the truth!
 
RY.................your desrciptions are making me hungry, very hungry....................
 
I like to brush w/ olive oil, fresh basil, & grated parm/reg, & black pepper & bake...............................
 
Have a loverly day........................

'Morning all. Vampire free zone here, I love garlic. According to Culpeper, 'It keepeth ye blood slypperie' which is a bit of a bonus for something that tastes so good. Garlic bread - call me old fashioned but it has to be a baguette, the best butter, minced raw garlic & parsley mixed together and lavishly squidged between the slices - works best if the bread is a bit stale. It's that last five minutes in the oven when the tinfoil has been opened up to crisp the top ahhh! the aroma!....... what an agony of anticipation! - and as the writer of the article up top mentioned, the burned fingers 'cos you just can't wait. I was thrilled to discover that a couple of times a year, Breton market traders do a French market in a nearby town, selling among other things lovely strings of big fat garlic bulbs - the white skinned one which is the most common and a pink-skinned variety which is sweeter and smoked garlic which is delicious. My efforts at growing my own garlic are dismal unless we get a really hot summer. It's well worth walking in the woods just now as the wild garlic carpet underfoot puts up a delicious - well - pong.

Imperfect garlic bread is an oxymoron. Actually it morphs into croutons when rebaked. I have made it over a campfire with Wonder Bread straddling a forked stick with tub margarine gooed on top while sprinkling the garlic salt on liberally. Wasn't half bad served with Chef Boyardee heated up in his own can and an iced cold PBR. All while awaiting smores.

I keep a jar
of XVOO with crushed garlic in the refrigerator. Not only does it come in handy
for quick garlic bread( in whatever form I decide to fix......with chopped parsley
or a combo of chopped fresh herbs or not) but the family likes green beans, spinach
and numerous other fresh veggies sautéed in the garlic and oil. They even like
a smear on top of the homemade pizza crust under the sauce before baking....or
sometimes just the garlic and oil on some leftover pasta with a little grated
Locatelli. I am actually getting ready to make a batch of fresh parsley pesto
this morning. The cool wet spring has been perfect for a bumper flat leaf
parsley crop.

As a girl, my job was the garlic bread we had 3 or 4 times a week. This involved taking a stick of butter out of the fridge at breakfast time. Then, during the Cocktail Hour, I would slice the supermarket "Italian Bread" laterally and spread both top and bottom with the soft butter and copious amounts of garlic powder. Then the important portion cutting (but not all the way through) and a careful package of "drugstore wrapped" aluminum foil. Into the oven for 20 minutes or so.

Now as a "Chef" of course I cannot use garlic powder (I would be struck by lightning from the Culinary gods)and my standard for bread is much higher. I am hard wired for the lateral slice but what I spread in between is either a compound garlic butter (sometimes containing gorgonzola) or soft butter with a head of roasted garlic spread thickly. Or Bruschetta---bread cut in slices and grilled and rubbed with cut garlic and olive oil.

Do we have garlic bread 3 or 4 times a week? No way--I could pretend its due to sensible eating but its much more due to not wanting to fuss more over the bread than the entree.

Tommy is 110% correct when he says "imperfect garlic bread is an oxymoron."

This is my recipe for garlic butter: http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/condiments/garlic-parmesan-butter/
 
I like a puffy sourdough french loaf, slit horizontally down the side like a hot dog bun, spread both cut sides with the butter, sprinkle in your shredded cheese of choice, wrap in foil and toast under the broiler for a minute or two until toasty on the outside and melty on the inside. 
 
Garlic bread is like pizza, even bag GB is better than no GB!  The Indian restaurant across the street from my day job always smells of onions and garlic first thing in the morning and it makes me hungry!  They have fantastic onion kulcha, not exactly garlic bread but still cravable.

A glorious topic!
 
I devoured the recipes offered, and cannot best them -- or those of my fellow Villagers. I'm left with a watering mouth.

Now what to serve with the garlic bread...beef carpaccio? 4 cheese gnocchi? Rigatoni Amatriciana? Penne all' arrabiatta?  Spaghetti and meatballs?  Shrimp and asparagus rissoto?

1-small bowl to hold the whole
1-minced garlic, entire clove, toasted lightly upon the stove
1-sprinkle of Italian herbs, if I may use nouns which once were verbs
1-pinch of la fleur de sel (cheap store brands work just as well)
1-liberal dose of olive oil, xv from Italian soil...

Combine all and do not tarry,
Set aside, allow to marry.
Select your bread, you'll want it edible
Ciabatta's a choice one might find credible
Warm it, tear it, dip, enjoy
A glass of wine one might employ.
And if one truly seeks a winner
Have it all along with dinner!

If garlic bread is not available I do love a crusty loaf of rustic bread dipped in good olive oil and balsamic vinegar as well. 
 
Olivia, it is too early for me to even attempt to rhyme in my posts, my hat is off to you.
 
I read an article once about a study on the effect of garlic bread in social settings.  Apparently it concluded that at meals where garlic bread was present there were increased appetites, decrease in drunkeness, increase in harmony among the diners, and general conviviality all around.  I'm not scientist but I concur.

Garlic bread,and indeed, just garlicky foods,may indeed be an aphrodisiac! Why, just look at how many children garlic eating Nationalities have, and realize if everyone at the table eats it, no one smells it....(or something like that)

Just thinking about it makes me hungry, not sure about the aphrodisiac qualities though.

Did the thought of garlic breath scare everyone away?

Garlic bread is yet another reason that the gods created family run Italian restaurants and pizza joints. I have taken a sacred oath to support these noble and toothsome ventures and to never bake false idols. And they often deliver as well as having take out.

Although nothing, but bothing beats being there.

If they couldn't do the bread, they wouldn't have survived and prospered.

It is also a contributing factor to the concept of extra napkins and dark absobant socks/sox.

I'll give you garlic bread. A place in Appleton, The Gibson, in its early days presented a split baguette with half a head of roasted garlic to squeeze out, smear about and eat and we did it.
Then, they cheapened the bread and not long after, folded altogether.
With the exception of our granddaughter, our family does not tolerate raw garlic at all well so garlic bread is not eaten.

Bothing, is often used as the second nothing in some forgotten languages. Just in case you were wondering and vondering about it in my previous post.

Same principle holds true for vondering......

I have sauteed whole garlic cloves in butter, with salt and cracked black pepper, a Cajun spice called Tony Sacharee's (great on just about everything), dill and mozerella cheese till garlic gets done. The add two sticks butter, melt. Add olive oil the let completely cool. The next day, toss it in your Cuisinart and puree til blended. Spread that generously on fresh French bread and toss in a 400° oven till brown.

Oh my my my....nice adult beverage with a nice adult to share it with ....heaven.

Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, steamed cauliflower, a rueben sandwich with sauerkraut and a coke. Yummo.
We've been involved with vintage china, sterling flatware and really, really green goblets. Lotta money in that stuff as it turns out and we get to keep it because it all remained after other family members had hauled away what they wanted.
Who knew that there was such a thing as a tomato spoon?

OMG! Stoney, if it is one of those extremely rare left handed tomato spoons, you could be really onto something....

STONEY........................my mother cannot tolerate raw garlic, so before I make hummus or garlic bread I slow cook the chopped garlic in olive oil until it is soft & jam textured. It melts right in & no raw garlic! I made a pot of sauce last night & I slow cooked my onions & garlic into a lovely jam before I put it all together. It brings out the sweetness & you can take a nap or do other things as it cooks.........................nap, drink tea, play w/ animals, kiss your sweetheart, & have a snack.....................mmmmmmm......................snacks.....