Dough Products
Garlic Bread
Proper garlic bread: a baguette sliced almost through and packed with salted butter beaten with mellowed toasted garlic, plenty of flat-leaf parsley and a little Parmesan, baked in foil until soft and fragrant, then opened up for a crisp, golden finish.
- Serves 8
- Hands-on 15 min
- Bake 15–20 min
- Freeze it unbaked
- Italian-American / British
Method
Heat the oven to 200°C (fan 180°C, gas 6).
Put the unpeeled garlic cloves (6 cloves) in a dry frying pan over a medium heat and toast for 8–10 minutes, shaking the pan now and then, until the skins are blackened in spots and the cloves give a little when pressed. Leave to cool, then peel and mash them to a paste with the flat of a knife. (For a sharper, more pungent garlic bread, simply crush the cloves raw.)
Beat the garlic into the soft butter (125 g) with the parsley (a little), Parmesan (20 g) if using, and a good grinding of pepper (to taste).
With a bread knife, cut the baguette (400 g) at 2 cm intervals, stopping just short of the base so the loaf holds together. Spread the garlic butter generously between the slices and smear any left over across the top.
Wrap the loaf loosely in foil, leaving the top slightly open, and bake for 10 minutes. Fold back the foil and bake for another 5–8 minutes until the top is crisp and golden and the butter has melted right through.
Serve at once, pulling the slices apart at the table.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
See also
Chef’s notes
- Open-faced version: halve an Italian loaf or ciabatta lengthways, spread the cut sides with the butter and bake on a tray at 220°C (fan 200°C) for 8–10 minutes until golden, then cut into fingers.
- Toasting the garlic in its skin mellows it and makes it sweet and nutty, so you can use a lot without it tasting harsh.
- Air fryer: cut the loaf to fit and cook at 180°C for 10–14 minutes, without foil.
- To freeze, wrap the buttered, unbaked loaf in foil and freeze for up to 2 months. Bake from frozen, in the foil, for 20 minutes, then open and crisp for 5 minutes.
- Cheesy garlic bread: tuck slices of mozzarella between the slices with the butter.
How this recipe was developed
We compared Christopher Kimball’s America’s Test Kitchen garlic bread and Jamie Oliver’s with the most-rated versions on BBC Good Food and BBC Food.
- Toasted garlic. America’s Test Kitchen (in Christopher Kimball’s time) toasts 9–10 unpeeled cloves in a dry pan before mashing them into the butter, for deep flavour without harshness. We use the same trick.
- Not too much butter. The test kitchen warns that too much butter makes the bread greasy; 125 g for a large baguette keeps it rich but crisp.
- Hasselback slices. BBC Food’s classic garlic bread (Philippa Davis, 4.9/5) cuts the baguette almost through and fills every gap, with optional Parmesan; we follow that shape.
- Foil, then open. BBC Good Food’s garlic bread (4.6/5 from 44 ratings) and most other versions bake in foil first; opening it for the last minutes gives a crisp top.
- Lots of parsley. Jamie Oliver’s tear-and-share garlic bread is a different, bread-dough style, but his generous bunch of flat-leaf parsley persuaded us to be generous too.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
- America's Test Kitchen (Christopher Kimball era): Classic American Garlic Bread (2007)
- Jamie Oliver: Scrumptious garlic bread
- BBC Food (Philippa Davis): Classic garlic bread (4.9/5, 7 ratings)
- BBC Good Food: Garlic bread (4.6/5, 44 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.