How to Make Really Good Garlic Bread

In the world of ingredients,

garlic

can be a real bully, especially in recipes where it takes center stage, like

garlic

bread

, so I'm here with Keith who's going to show us how to harness the power of garlic. You're right, garlic can be a bully. Bridget, but today I'm here to show you how to control that harsh flavor and

make

really

good

garlic

bread

. The first thing we will do is prepare garlic butter and we will start with it. a microplane and our garlic and we are going to get a very very fine paste that is going to cook very well and will not leave any bits we are going to need a tablespoon of garlic for which you are going to need four or five cloves To get there, you can see that I have a very fine paste here, when you break down the cell walls of garlic, you build a compound called allicin and that's the garlic flavor, that's the bully of garlic, so what we want to do is build that allicin. but then we want to stop it, so what we're going to do is cook it.

The quickest way to

make

it is to simply put it in some melted butter. Here I have four tablespoons of melted unsalted butter and I'm just going to put this in the microwave for a minute, turn it up to over 150 and it will stop the allison production and prevent the garlic flavor from forming, so a minute in the microwave I'll stir it halfway through and it should be gently bubbling around the edges when we're done okay Bridgette so let's microwave this garlic for a minute. We've killed Allison, this will give us most of the garlic flavor in our garlic bread, but we

really

wanted a more complex garlic flavor. so let's add more garlic flavor to this garlic bread by using garlic powder.

Garlic powder. I know that for our garlic bread the dehydrating process creates those long toasted sweet flavors, but we found that with garlic powder you have to add a little water. it's a teaspoon of water and a teaspoon of garlic powder it's like blooming spices you wake up that allicin you pick up those slow roasted garlic notes now garlic powder has been a bit of a controversial ingredient here in the test kitchen when to use it It's always the question when not to use it, but here is something to buy garlic powder. Garlic powder and granulated garlic in the supermarket are basically the same thing, they are dehydrated garlic and the difference is in the texture.

Garlic powder tends to be more Well, powdered and granulated garlic has a coarser texture, but we found that you can substitute one for one in almost any recipe, so we have our garlic slurry here, now we just need to finish our butter of garlic. In testing, there are two types of pathways. For the garlic bread the recipes followed, they used either melted butter or softened butter, but we had trouble with both, we wanted something in between. What we're going to do is take more softened butter, these are another four. tablespoons of softened butter and we're going to add our hot melted butter here with the garlic I'm going to add an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper a little bit of spice on the bottom which is always

good

yeah and a half teaspoon of salt that's just going to bring out those garlic flavors , we're going to stir this and we're going to have the perfect consistency of this pasta that looks like garlic baby food, yeah, I was thinking garlic glaze, so this is going to be the perfect consistency to spread on our bread, okay, Bridget, we have our garlic butter here now we're going to focus on the bread and here I have a supermarket Italian loaf that's about 12 inches long and that's going to give us the perfect consistency for our garlic bread we're just going to cut the middle of it horizontally quite a bit. simple.

You'd think you'd want an artisan bread with an open crumb crust, but it didn't really work for garlic bread. You can see this really nice luxurious interior, no. big holes, it will really hold on to the garlic butter, it will be delicious. I'm going to put a little bit of this in the center of these buns and I find it easier to just put a channel right in the middle and then You can go back with a spatula and spread it out a little bit evenly. Many recipes we found use a 350 degree oven, which is pretty low, but we found that it would dry out the bread and we want to retain some of that moisture in the bread so we're going to use a fairly high oven at 450 degrees for three or four minutes per Please tell me it's not cooked because it's pale it's very pale I admit, if you toast it all the way you won't get a very good one we want to develop a significant crust, like you would with a grilled cheese sandwich, so that it has a very thick crust and a tender and moist interior, so the best way we found to make it was to take this garlic bread and flip it. on our baking sheet, now we're going to take a second baking sheet, we're just going to push it down very gently and put it back in the oven for five to ten minutes with this rimmed baking sheet on top to help provide weight and have a good contact surface on the bottom, that's a good idea, okay Bridgette, it's been about eight minutes and our garlic bread is ready, it smells great, it's gone, no, I can smell it but I can't see it, like this here's the big reveal beautiful bridgette hello oh look this is good it's a perfectly uniform color from edge to edge it's going to be perfect and that golden brown crust should be audible oh and look at this everything is perfect here's that layer of garlic right at the top, but the inside is still nice and soft.

I have to say that every part of this bread is about hitting it perfectly so that you have that fresh garlic that you raised and then tamed it a little bit. garlic powder which was perfect because it really adds that almost roasted flavor to this and then I love that the texture is compact but it's not too spongy or too dense, no more bowling, no more bullies, I love it, well we tamed the bullet of garlic. and created a lovely layered garlic flavor. Start by microwaving fresh grated garlic with butter, then combine it with cayenne garlic powder and more unmelted butter this time to make a smooth paste, spread that aromatic paste on the cut sides of an Italian loaf and then bake sliced. side up, then turn the bread cut side down and press it with a baking sheet to compact the fluffy interior and ensure a crispy, golden crust, so you'll have it from our test kitchen to your kitchen.

Really really good garlic bread, thanks for watching America's test. kitchen, what did you think? Well, leave a comment and tell us what recipes you're excited to make or just say hello. You can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later see you later