richard Ok, here’s a plan…the next time you make pizza dough (what do you mean you don’t make your own pizza dough?) make double/quadruple/sextuple quantities, portion them out and freeze the surplus for future generations. That way, whenever you fancy something a tad tastier than can be supplied by your local Dominoes, you’ll have a pizza instantly on hand (assuming of course you’ve remembered to de-frost the dough, pre-make the tomato sauce and buy the anchovy and pineapple toppings). A further advantage is that you can also use it to make the thin, crispy base of this garlic bread, and believe me, few things better accompany your Vino Collapso of choice than this garlicky, buttery, treat. It’s a Friday night tradition here at Yumblog Manor you know.
Preparation time: 5 minutes plus half an hour to get up to room temperature
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Makes: one big round piece of garlic bread
Skill level: easy
Ingredients
- frozen pizza dough – a hand-size ball of dough (about the size of a baseball, or a large orange, or a rolled up pair of knee socks, or, etc.
- garlic – 4 fat cloves
- butter – 50g
- coarse sea salt
Defrost your pizza dough.
If you don’t have any pizza dough in the freezer, you can make some by following this recipe.
Get your butter out of the fridge to soften.
Roll the dough out thinly onto lightly-greased baking tray.
Cover with oiled cling film and leave in a warm place for half an hour. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t have time to do this, although it’s best if you can.
Meanwhile, crush the garlic cloves into a paste with the back of a knife.
Mix the garlic paste with the softened butter (it needs to be very soft so it can be spread over the dough)
Spread over the dough.
Preheat your oven to the max.
Place garlic bread in oven and bake until golden and crunchy, about 15 minutes.
Remove and eat.
Verdict: thin, crispy, garlicky and delicious. The perfect prelude to a pizza being as it is essentially a toppingless pizza itself.
Drink: It’s Friday night so we drink until we drop … which these days is about 9:45.
Entertainment: Greedy double portions of ‘The Killing’ on DVD…it’s the middle-class box set of choice.
