Gluten Free Garlic Bread

I love garlic bread, as kids mum always made it for special occasions. Mum's side of the family is Italian so, birthday dinners were always pasta. There would be a a big tray or Lasagna or cannelloni, a pot of garlic spaghetti (this was my favourite), and 2 or 3 loaves of garlic bread. My grandparents (Nonno & Nonna) and my uncle would come over for dinner or lunch and we would eat all that pasta and bread.

Italians traditonally refer to pasta sauce (sugo) as red (rosso) or white (bianco). Bread is used to "mop up" the sauce left on the plate at the end of a meal and mopping up red pasta sauce with a nice piece of garlic bread, is just amazing. Historically bread was also used as a main meal in times of scarcity. You could cover bread with sauce, which may or may not have tiny pieaces or meat in it, and that was dinner. Typically stale bread was used.

Red Sauce is a tomato based sauce while white sauce is cream or olive oil based, depending on which area of Italy. Cream based dishes are typically from the north.

Ingredients

1 Loaf of crusty gf bread (I buy the vienna loaf from Alternative Bites)

150g Butter (leave out to soften)

2-4 cloves of garlic (to taste, 2 will be enough for most people but I like a nice strong garlic flavour)

I like to use original butter which has salt in it. I like the saltiness of the butter with the garlic and the crusty bread but if you don't like salt or a following a low sodium diet you can use unsalted butter.

Method

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius

Depending on how soft your butter is you can either use a fork, or use a food processor. If the butter is nice and soft mash it up with fork. Crush the garlic cloves onto the butter and then mix through with a fork or if using a food processor mix crushed garlic through till well mixed through.

Slice your loaf but not all the way to the bottom, to desired thickness, I find thicker slices (about 1.5cm thickness) work better for serving. Gently open the cut sections using a butter knife and spread the garlic butter on both sides on the bread.

Do this for all of the cut sections. I like to leave to fairly chunky pieces at the ends of the bread (this is the best part). In my family we refer to this as the culo (which is slang for bottom/bum).

When you have finished it should look something like this.

If you prefer less garlic butter you could spread it on just one side of the cut, it will melt into the bread in the oven.

Wrap the bread in foil and place it on a tray in the preheated oven. Bake for about 15 minutes. I like the garlic bread to be cruchy on the outside and soft in the middle. If you prefer yours less crunchy then cook for 10 minutes instead.

My finished loaf came out like this.

And here is the slice I cut off to to eat with my dinner. I served this with a gluten free french style chicken, mushroom and leek casserole.

If you wanted to make it extra fancy you could mix a tablespoon or two of parmesan or pecorino cheese into the butter rmixture before spreading it onto the bread.