Spicy Garlic Bread

Recipe: https://www.bakedbyrachel.com/spicy-garlic-bread/

Finished Product!

I made African Peanut Stew for dinner. It's a hearty soup, but I wanted to bake something, so I looked up a bread that would go with it, even though it stands as its own on a meal. A lot of spicy bread recipes I could find are cheese breads (cayenne cheddar, for example, which would be delicious) but I don't think they'd go well with peanut stew.

It turned out fairly well, though dense. I'll have to look up how to make it fluffier, it might be in the kneading, it might be in the rising, neither of which I did very well. I don't think I'd make bread if I didn't have a dough hook on my kitchen aid, which does it for you, but I bet hand kneading has its benefits. I also wanted to take a nap while the bread rose, so I rose it for longer at a low temperature, which, who knows. While dense, it was still tasty, so it all worked out, and I got my nap.

The three components for the bread--activated yeast, spices heated in butter, and flour. It called for three cloves of garlic, and I put in a whole bulb (we have a lot of garlic to use...), and you still couldn't really taste the garlic in the final product. Oh well. I added a little extra red pepper flakes too, which worked for us. 

Mixing it all together

The completed dough ball.

Risen dough, it's always cool to see.

Getting ready to bake. Olive oil in the bottom of the dutch oven, some olive oil on top, then sprinkled with salt and more red pepper flakes.

Just out of the oven.

Cooling on the rack.

The best thing since sliced bread! Wait...