Mama Lee is coming over tonight and I’m making steak. I also have a leftover loaf of bread from local bakery Semifreddi’s, so naturally I was like: hell yes, I’m making garlic bread. 

Garlic bread is one of those foolproof sides that goes with just about anything–steak, pasta, chicken. It’s best to use a thick loaf of bread, like ciabatta or focaccia. You want bread that will get nice and crusty on the outside, but will stay chewy on the inside. Semifreddi’s has a crazy good sour batard, which is a bit fluffier than ciabatta. If you can find it, I strongly urge you to use it for this recipe; ciabatta can get a little too crunchy for my liking and this batard stays nice and fluffy even after toasting in the oven.

You will need:

• Loaf of ciabatta, sour batard, or something similar (I only had half of a loaf, but this recipe is for the entire thing)
• 4 tablespoons melted butter or olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic
• Salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Slice the bread through the midsection, like so:

Cut these into smaller pieces and set aside. In the meantime, get a small hand grater and simply grate the garlic cloves into a bowl. Much quicker than chopping, and that way you get all that garlicky goodness onto the bread. Take the olive oil or melted butter and mix with grated garlic until you have a nice paste. With a pastry brush, brush the oil/garlic mixture onto your bread:

Sprinkle with a little salt, arrange the pieces on a baking sheet lined with foil, and pop it into your oven for 5 minutes. I know, it sounds super short. You just want to get the bread toasted, and then after those 5 minutes turn your broiler on. That way, the top gets nice and toasty and you can make sure the garlic has been cooked through. Keep an eye on it! The broiler is super hot and works really quickly, so things will burn if you look away for a second too long. You want to broil the bread until it gets nice and golden on top, and you start to see some of the garlic brown around the edge:

And there you have it. Enjoy!

Note: to really amp this up, you could add some grated parmesan to the garlic mix and sprinkle with chopped parsley when it’s done. Unfortunately I didn’t have any of that on hand and my car is in the shop 😦