French Bread -- Straight from North Carolina

Have you ever read “If You Give a Mouse A Cookie”? Well, this post reminds us a bit of that book.

We wanted to make some French bread, and since we had homemade bread, we wanted to make some tricked out garlic bread, then because we had garlic bread, we had to have some pasta … it just goes on and on from there. And to think, all of this started with French bread.

Below is a link to a basic French bread recipe, we found it to be a good base for the garlic bread.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/French-Bread/Detail.aspx

Notes:


- We halved the recipe, and still ended up with 2 good sized loaves of bread.
- Remember, when making bread you want the dough to stretch and not break, see our post on making pita for tips (and pictures).
- We got a really cool pan that may not be as multi-purpose as we normally like, but it was cheap, and makes for a conversation piece (well, a conversation for all us culinar nerds out there).

- Instead of using an egg wash, we threw about 5 ice cubes into the bottom of the oven (just before we put in our bread) to create some steam. We added another 4 cubes half way through baking. This makes a nice crunchy crust without the egg wash.

Garlic bread:

1 loaf of fresh made French bread (or store/bakery bought if you don't have the time to do it yourself)

4 cloves of garlic- sliced

2 Tbsp. olive oil

½ stick butter

½ tsp salt

Heat olive oil in pan. Place garlic in hot oil, sauté until golden brown. Pour garlic and oil into a small bowl. Sprinkle the salt over the garlic, and slightly squish the garlic cloves with the back of a spoon.

In the same pan you used for the garlic, melt the butter. Pour the butter over the garlic and oil. Let this sit for at least 30 minutes at room temperature. This will allow the garlic flavor infuse into the butter. If you want a deeper flavor for the garlic butter, when you’re melting the butter, keep ‘cooking’ it past the point of melted. You will notice it turns slightly tan, at this point take it off the heat (it will darken as the pan cools). The browned butter has a nice nutty flavor that adds to the final product.

Cut your bread in half lengthwise and spread each half with the garlic butter. You may not end up using the entire amount of butter, that’s okay, save it and use it for your pasta!

Bake at 425 until bread is golden brown. Alternatively, you can place your bread under the broiler… but make sure you watch it, it’s not as good when it’s burnt.