Kitchen Tip: Make-Ahead Garlic Bread

So let me preface what I’m about to say by saying that I love my kids and I love spending time with them. But I’m a creature of habit. I love having a routine. While I try to be flexible in many areas of my life, if my general everyday schedule is spontaneously messed up without warning, it messes me up.

This week, school has gotten cancelled again. And again. And then my landline rings at 4:00 pm and since the only people who call me on my landline are telemarketers, collectors looking for Meshach McCall (have no idea if that’s how his name is spelled), and the robocall announcing that school is cancelled the next day, I get this sinking feeling of doom that school has been cancelled again. And it was. One of those was a legit snow day (actually, it was because of an ice storm–does that make it an ice day?), but the other two were iffy (like today when it was 55 degrees and sunny outside and I made my kids run up and down the driveway 20 times. Our driveway is unusually long.)

Either way, I’m off my game. I find myself showering for the day in the late afternoon and changing from one pair of yoga pants to another pair of yoga pants. I don’t do this in the summer because I’m ready for it. Armed with swimming lessons and playdates and routines. But this…I am not prepared for this.

So during our pseudo snow day adventures, we tried using up what food we had in the house. On Monday, we had French Dip sandwiches on ciabatta rolls from Sam’s Club, but when we all ended up tummy troubles (yes, I hate the word “tummy,” unless you’re asking a baby where his tummy is, but that’s about as much detail as I’m willing to go into) and the meat smelled a little funky the next day, we decided to play it safe and toss the leftovers. So then we had a whole bunch of leftover rolls, teetering on the edge of going bad.

When I made this Minestrone Soup, I decided to use the leftover rolls to make garlic bread. Even then, I still had a bunch of rolls leftover (I didn’t want to make more than we needed because I would either eat the extras or throw them away because, let’s face it, no one wants reheated toasted garlic bread) and I still had some garlic butter left. I was about to pack up the garlic butter and toss the bread (because it was on the edge) when I remembered the one piece of wisdom I gleaned from the dreadful summer I worked at the grocery store bakery the summer before I went to college: use the day-old (or older) bread to make garlic bread and then freeze it. Yes, that’s right, the garlic bread you buy at the grocery store is yesterday’s French bread that didn’t sell. At least that’s how it worked at this particular grocery store.

So no. This is not the most mind-blowing recipe either. But it’s a little life-hack that will make things easier–just imagine a world where a) that yummy preservative-free bread never goes to waste because you didn’t get around to eating it fast enough and b) you’re never too far away from hot garlic bread.

So all you need is leftover Italian or French bread (or not necessarily leftover, but just stuff you need to use up before it goes bad) of some sort–ciabatta, ciabatta rolls, baguette, French Bread, whatever

and your favorite garlic butter. If I have garlic bread seasoning handy in my fridge, I’ll mix 1 1/2 tablespoons with 1 stick of butter.

If I don’t, I just mix 2-3 cloves of minced garlic and 1 teaspoon of dry parsley in with a stick of softened butter. There’s also this or this–really, whatever grabs your fancy.

If your bread isn’t pre-sliced, slice it in half.

Then spread each side with the garlic butter. If you want to get crazy, you could sprinkle one side with shredded mozzarella cheese.

Tightly wrap each piece of bread in aluminum foil…

and then place each wrapped loaf in a Ziploc bag and label it with the date. Unless you’re doing a whole baguette or loaf of french bread–then just wrap it in plastic wrap to try and keep it from freezer burning.

The-en, whenever you’re ready to serve it, take out as many pieces as you need. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and pop the wrapped loaves in there (you don’t even have to wait for it to preheat). Check on it after 20 minutes or so and place it back in the oven if it needs a little more time. If you’d like to toast it just a little, you can place the halves, buttered-side-up under the broiler during the last few minutes. Remove from oven and carefully cut it however you want to.