Cheesy Stone Baked Garlic Bread

Garlic bread is one of life’s guilty pleasures. I don’t know what it is about it, if you think about it the concept is kinda strange, garlic on toast?! The combination however, is stupendous and I have never met anybody who doesn’t love it. There are also many different varieties, I guess the classic method would be to use a crispy baguette, but my personal favourite would be a thin and crispy pizza dough. Maybe I am just too madly in love with pizzas but every time I make pizza I will always make a garlic bread to start, and it goes down an absolute storm. I would also fully recommend that if you are going to try this recipe, which you should, you should double or triple your dough quantity and make pizzas too. Check out my pizza, pizza, pizza recipe to learn how to make the pizza sauce and see potential toppings to use.

–          100g strong white bread flour

–          ½ tsp easy blend dried yeast

–         ½ tsp salt

–          1 desert spoons olive oil

–          60ml warm water

–          100g mozzarella –torn into strips

–          2 garlic cloves – crushed

–          75g salted butter

–        Torn fresh basil

Combine the flour, yeast and salt together in a bowl and make a well in the middle

Mix the oil into the warm water and pour into the well in the middle of the bowl

Stir the flour gradually into the well bringing it in a bit at a time from the side of the bowl.

Get the dough out on a floured worktop and kneed for 5-10 minutes until smooth and elastic

Grease a clean bowl with olive oil and put the dough into this, covering with an oiled sheet of cling film

Place somewhere warm (I put mine in the airing cupboard) and leave to rise for about an hour.

Meanwhile, to make the garlic butter mash together the butter and garlic so it is well combined

Turn oven to 220’C

When you dough has doubled in size, remove and place on a floured worktop. Give it a quick knead and then roll out to your preferred thickness. I tend to roll it to about 2mm thickness.

Spread over the garlic butter so the whole base is covered and scatter over the mozzarella

Bake in the oven for 7-10 minutes and then serve scattered with the torn basil.