Want to make some homemade garlic bread, but only have garlic powder or granulated garlic on hand? Maybe you have garlic but it's already sprouted and you aren't sure if you can still use it for the bread? Let's show you what to do.
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When you say the words "garlic bread" in my household I am greeted with a ton of excitement. The kids love it, especially my daughter Autumn.
We like to make it often using whatever bread we just so happen to have on hand. But we don't always have garlic on hand. I find that most of the garlic you get in the grocery stores isn't of great quality. It lacks a good garlic flavor and is often already sprouting when you buy it. It's hard to tell how old it is.
That's why I often just opt for using garlic powder. But how well does that work? Can you still get good garlic flavor out of powder?
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🧄 Why Garlic Powder Will Work
Garlic powder is what you get when garlic is dried out and then ground into a fine powder. It is easy to add to the bread and won't burn as long as your temperature isn't too high. It has the flavor of garlic. Most garlic powder isn't super strong or spicy in flavor.
Sometimes you will find granulated garlic. This is garlic that is not as fine as garlic powder. It would work as well.
📋 How to Use Garlic Powder
You can just sprinkle it on the bread itself. But I think the best way to incorporateit is adding it to softened butter. Whip the butter with garlic powder using a hand mixer or your own muscle and a fork. Make sure to taste the butter first to see if it has enough garlic in it. Then spread the butter onto each slice.
You don't want to completely melt the butter, just soft enough to spread it on the bread and not have it immediately just soak in. You could add some parmesan cheese as well. That is always wanted in my house.
If you don't want to use butter you can drizzle the bread with some olive oil instead. Regular or extra virgin. You want to have some fat for flavor and for something for the garlic to adhere to.
🏆 What Garlic Powder is Best
Repeat after me, not all garlic powder is the same. There is a difference in quality. Although you will be hard pressed to find that in the grocery store. Most garlic powder is just a mix of what garlic was harvested blended to taste uniformly the same.
The length of time from when the garlic is ground to when you get it is a mystery. It could already be years old.
For this and many reasons more, I recommend you search out for a high quality garlic powder. I don't think it gets much better than that from Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices. Their Purple Stripe Garlic has a real garlic flavor that it so good you won't even miss fresh garlic. I feel you get a more genuine garlic flavor than anything else I have tried.
The garlic is harvested in northern Vietnam. Here is more about the source of the garlic.
We've partnered with DACE, a social enterprise in Vietnam, to connect with the farmers growing our Purple Stripe Garlic. The garlic is grown by communities of Hmong farmers in Vietnam's northern highlands, who are learning to grow higher-value crops and transitioning to organic and regenerative agricultural methods. We're honored to support them in that work, and to share their deeply flavorful garlic with you!
Burlap & Barrel Website
🛒Get the Best Garlic Powder
Burlap & Barrel sources this garlic powder from the mountains of Northern Vietnam. It is made from an heirloom variety of garlic that has a purple stripe on it's skin. Use in replacement of fresh garlic or as the best garlic powder you have ever tasted.
🌱 Can You Use Sprouted Garlic?
Let's get this out of the way, sprouted garlic isn't necessarily bad. It's not inedible. It may be less sweet and more bitter than fresher garlic, but you could still use it. When I talk sprouted here I am not just talking about seeing green coming out of the bulb. I am talking about garlic that the individual cloves have small sprouts in their insides.
Sadly this is the case so often in the grocery store. Garlic lasts a while and there is no way of knowing how fresh your grocery store garlic is. The best thing to do is buy it in season from a local farmer's market and when you can't use a quality garlic powder like the Burlap & Barrel one that I already mentioned.
When I do use fresh garlic, I normally cut off part of the head of garlic. I make sure the cloves are exposed and I rub the garlic onto the bread. This should provide enough flavor without having to chop up the garlic. But if you do use chopped garlic I would mix it with your fat - butter or oil first before adding to the bread.
🧂 Can You Use Garlic Salt?
Sure you could use garlic salt, it's going to work but I don't recommend it. In order to add more garlic flavor you need to add more salt, which could make your bread overly salty. Normally I don't add any salt to garlic bread. The salt in the bread itself, plus salted butter and parmesan cheese has salt in it provides enough salt without need for any additional salt.
🍞 How to Cook Garlic Bread
The oven is the traditional way to do it. Some take a whole loaf and cook it in the oven and some people do it by the slice. There isn't a wrong way to do it. 400 degrees is a good temperature to use. Or you could do it super fast under the broiler, but you need to really watch it and not leave the oven while it's cooking.
I prefer the air fryer method as you don't have to wait for an oven to heat up. After preparing the bread I cook it in the air fryer for about 3-4 minutes at 400 degrees depending on the thickness and size of the bread. I have a Ninji Foodi Dual Zone Two Basket air fryer that has a bake setting instead of the air fry setting. It's blows around less so the bread stays in place better and it still browns it well.
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