The genius garlic bread trick I learned while working in Italy

You’ll never throw out old, crusty bread again.

One of my favorite cooking tips is one I learned while working a stage (a French term for professional kitchen internship, rhymes with garage) in a family-owned restaurant in northwestern Italy. 

For two weeks, I worked my butt off in their kitchen doing every job from scrubbing the dirt off truffles to cleaning out the pasta boiling machine (yes, there’s a machine for that). I learned a ton, including how to make complicated regional dishes like hand-cut egg yolk-based angel hair pasta, stuffed agnolotti, truffle-infused salami, and veal tonnato. 

Those are all great dishes to have in one’s repertoire, but there is one “recipe” I picked up in my time there that I use at least once a week. To call it a recipe is silly, because it’s really more of a trick. It’s 100% about frugality and the magic of garlic when it meets bread, and it’s all in the method.  

The Smart Garlic Bread Trick

At the end of the night as we closed down the kitchen, the chef would have me gather up the leftover loaves of crusty bread we didn’t end up using for bread baskets that night. She showed me how to rub a whole, fat, peeled garlic clove, keeping the clove as intact as possible by not pressing too hard. She rubbed the garlic clove all over the outside of the loaves. 

Rubbing a garlic clove along the rough exterior of crusty bread breaks down the cell structure, leaving behind a thin, sticky sheen of garlic flavor. By the morning, the crust was dry and no longer sticky, but there was a subtle layer of garlic flavor woven into the crust of the bread. 

The local bakery delivered freshly baked, crusty loaves every day—emphasis on crusty. This garlic rubbing trick works well on artisan-style loaves that have a crusty exterior, which will sort of grate the garlic and stand up to being roughly handled. (Don’t try this with a wimpy, thin-crusted grocery store loaf of “French bread.” It will probably fall apart.) 

While you can rub garlic on sliced bread, it’s tough to get the garlic juices to stick to the crust without destroying the integrity of the slice, so it’s best to use this method on large chunks or whole loaves of crusty bread. 

Once you’re done rubbing the garlic clove all over the craggy outer crust of bread, it will look broken down and mostly dissolved. Go ahead and toss any remaining garlic or save it for a vinaigrette or sauté. 

How To Use Garlic-Rubbed Bread

At the restaurant, they used garlic-rubbed bread to make crostini—two- to three-bite pieces drizzled with olive oil and toasted until golden. The crostini were served as an appetizer, topped with truffled white bean spread, chicken liver mousse, or alongside their famous steak tartare.

Back stateside, I didn’t stop with crostini, and I didn’t limit myself to day-old bread, either. Rubbing rustic bread with a garlic clove right before slicing it gives turkey sandwiches the Italian glow-up you didn’t know they needed. It's also awesome for a grown-up version of grilled cheeses, adding a hint of aromatic extraness. 

It’s also a better way to make classic garlic bread—spread slices of garlic-rubbed bread with butter or olive oil on the cut side, then broil them for deeply flavorful garlic bread without the harsh bite of chopped garlic.

This seasoned bread trick is also a good friend to salads. Cut the bread into cubes, toss them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbs, then toast them for the best croutons your Caesar salad has ever known. Ditto for panzanella, the Italian torn bread and tomato salad. There’s a hint of garlic, but not so much that it overpowers the other ingredients.

My husband likes to cut garlic-rubbed bread into sticks, toast them, and use them to dip into his soft-boiled eggs in the morning. If there is any leftover bread after a few days, I chuck it into the food processor and whiz it into sandy crumbs. They’re a great way to add crunch and a little hit of garlicky flavor to pasta, mac and cheese, or tuna noodle casserole.

Anywhere you’d use artisan bread, garlic-rubbed bread is even better.

Read the original article on Simply Recipes