OK, are you ready? Here we go....
Read on for Garlic Bread Recipe instructions...
Get a medium size bowl and drop a stick of butter in it. Let it sit there for a couple hours, you want it to get nice and soft.
OK - After the butter is soft get out the garlic. Get about 4 cloves of garlic and chop them up as fine as you can. Throw them into the bowl with the butter.
Chop up as fine as you can 1/4 cup of "fresh" parsley. Throw it into the bowl with the butter.
Sprinkle in about 1/2 tsp. of garlic powder.
Sprinkle in about 2 tsp. of sweet basil and a dash of oregano. Mix all the contents in the bowl well. OK - Let's call this Bowl #1.
Now do the exact same thing in a separate bowl with a 1/2 stick of butter and half all the other ingredients for this part. You will use this later on in the process. OK - Let's call this Bowl #2.
Pre-Heat your oven to 350 Degrees F.
While your oven is Pre-Heating, spread the yummy buttery garlic mix onto your nice loaf of Italian bread. (You will want to slice your loaf in half long ways). Spread an even layer over the bread (using the contents of Bowl #1) and get a little on the crust edges as well.
Quick Note...
The process of making the garlic bread is usually prepared right in front of your guests, because it is the last thing you'll want to cook. I'm usually in the middle of a nice conversation with my guests as I'm cutting up the garlic and mixing it into the butter (use real butter, just forget about your diet for a minute!) and spreading it on the bread and so on. It adds to the hunger of your guests :)
OK - Now take the two halves of Italian Bread you just lathered up with your tasty garlic spread and place them directly on your oven rack (which should be pre-heated at 350 Degrees F) and bake them for 9 minutes.
After the 9 minutes are up, take you bread out of the oven, let it cool for about 3 minutes or so, just enough so you can grab it with your hand while you slice it. OK - when it's cool enough, get a nice cutting board and slice up your bread into pieces about 1-1/2" thick. Now with the extra garlic butter spread you made earlier (Bowl #2) spread a little bit on both sides of each slice of bread. (If you have extra spread left over, just spread on the tops of the slices, a little extra garlic butter can't hurt :)
Now put all the slices onto a cookie sheet. Spread them out a little bit in a random pattern. Put them back into the oven for about 3 minutes.
Now take them out of the oven, switch your oven into broil mode. Wait for the broil to get nice and hot, now put your cookie sheet full of yummy garlic bread slices back into the oven and broil them for about 2 - 5 minutes. This is the tricky part. You need to watch this process very closely. (If the phone rings while your doing this; Don't answer it!. If the baby is crying during this process; let him cry! If someone is trying to talk to you: tell them your very busy making perfect garlic bread and you will get right back to them). So watch this part very closely, when you have the bread cooking in broil mode it can go from a garlic bread cooked to crunchy perfection to a bunch of burnt bread you have to throw away. You want to see the butter on the bread bubbling and what your shooting for is a nice even layer of speckled light brown, you know, kinda like lightly toasted bread. It's also important during this process to move the bread around, You may have to broil the bread for about 2 minutes and if you see some pieces browning more than others, then you'll want to shift pieces around to get them all evenly toasted.
That's it. The last part takes a lot of love and you will get the hang of it after making it a few times, all ovens are different, so you will just have to learn what works well with yours and make note of it so next time you'll know how much time you'll need.
Presentation...
What I usually do is get a nice bread basket, place a large kitchen towel in the basket, place the bread into the towel and wrap the towel over the bread and place it on the table. You'll want to time this out so the bread is finished right when everyone is sitting down to it. Good luck on trying to achieve this! It's a challenge getting everyone to sit at the table when you want them to.
That's it! You're done..... Easy as Pie!
