Garlic bread usually consists of bread topped with garlic, olive oil or butter and additional herbs such as parsley or oregano.
The dish has become exceptionally popular with versions dominating supermarket shelves.
However, there’s nothing quite like sinking your teeth into a homemade version, especially one with a fiery chilli kick.
Nigella Lawson’s chilli cheese garlic bread recipe is super simple and includes just six ingredients.
The recipe, which is from her book AT MY TABLE, doesn’t involve making your own bread but using a shop-bought chewy loaf of your choice.
Nigella said of the recipe: “Garlic bread — a damp-centred, often bendy, stick of it — was a dominating feature of my eating life in the ’70s and ’80s.
“This is a more robust version, gooey with cheese and warmly, rather than fierily, flecked with chilli.”
How to make Nigella’s chilli cheese garlic bread
Ingredients:
100 grams soft unsalted butter
Half teaspoon Maldon sea salt flakes
Four fat cloves garlic (peeled and minced)
One eighth of a teaspoon dried chilli flakes
One ball mozzarella (well drained and finely chopped)
One small (approx. 400g) white sourdough loaf or other good chewy bread
Method:
1. Firstly, preheat the oven to 220ºC/200ºC Fan/425ºF.
2. Next, beat together the butter, salt, garlic and chilli flakes, then beat in the mozzarella.
3. Slice the bread diagonally into slices that are around one inch apart. Do not slice through to the bottom.
4. Spread the garlic mixture generously and evenly between the slices before smearing the last scrapings down the middle of the loaf.
5. Wrap the bread in foil. Ensure there is a fold at the top so it can be opened easily. Bake it for 30 minutes. Once half an hour has passed, open up the parcel. If it’s still soft on top, put it back in the oven with the foil pulled back a bit and cook for five minutes until crisp.
6. Remove the garlic bread from the oven and lift the bread out of the foil. Place it on a board in the middle of the table and separate the slices using a sharp knife.
