American-style garlic bread Garlic bread, as most Americans know it today, descends from ancient Mediterranean bruschetta. The Americanized version typically substitutes butter for oil, garlic powder/salt for fresh product and commercial oregano. It may, or may not, also include some kind of Italian cheese (Romano, Parmesean) in either fresh grated or commercial powdered form. American-style garlic bread is prepared with long crusty loaves (Italian or French bread). Bread is sliced vertical or horizontal; butter/spice/cheese mixture is spread, then wrapped in foil and warmed in the oven. Frozen and pre-made garlic bread products may be found in most supermarkets. Garlic knots first surface in the 1980s. The relationship between bruschetta and garlic bread is a peculiar one. In principle, bruschetta is the honest, poor mans original -nothing but charred, oil-soaked bread rubbed with garlic-while garlic bread is the embellished pretender. But somehow things have got mixed up. British democracy has confused them. Garlic bread became genuinely democratised, sold in dispiriting packs of two, or even four, for 99p in the brightest freezer cabinets. Meanwhile, the monied torchbearers of democracy - in fact, the elite - went crazy for bruschetta, paying a small fortune for pane covered in broad beans or anchovies at the River Cafe. And so, bizarrely, buttery indigestible garlic bread has come to seem unpretentious peoples food, while bruschetta is the poncy snack of the Peoples Party. This is an unfortunate state of affairs. Everything that is best about bruschetta -- its power to bestow well-being in one crisp bite -- is betrayed by garlic bread. To begin with, as Marcella Hazan points out: The most important ingredient in bruschetta is not garlic but olive oil. The garlic on bruschetta is rubbed on, so that you inhale the fresh garlic perfume as a backdrop to the olive oil, rather than eating great lumps of it. The origin of bruschetta was probably the ancient Roman practice of tasting newly pressed olive oil on a piece of bread, with or without garlic -- a practice that has continued in the oil-producing areas of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. The name derives from bruscare, meaning to roast over coals. Alice Waterss version of bruschetta involves frying country bread in large amounts of oil, until thoroughly impregnated, and Elizabeth David recommends baking slices of white bread in the oven. ---Toast of the Tiber, Bee Wilson and Frances Stonor Saunders, New Statesman, April 24, 2004 (p. 50) [1940] Garlic Bread Slice French bread idagonally almost through loaf. Soften 1/2 cup butter, add 1 clove garlic, and let stand 15 minutes. Remove garlic, spread butter betwqeen slices, and bake in moderately hot oven (400 degrees F.) about 5 minutes, until loaf is thoroughly heated. Serve hot with cheese platter or with salad course. ---Edith Barbers Book Book, Edith M. Barber, eitor of Fod Column, New York Sun [G.P. Putnams Sons:New York](p. 103)
Posted on: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 15:41:00 +0000
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