Garlic bread is a delicious side that goes perfectly with most soups. If you prepare a lot of garlic bread at home as I do, you can save some dough by mixing up your own spice blend of Garlic Bread Seasoning. Make a big batch and keep it on hand for those buttery garlic bread cravings.
Toasty, buttery garlic bread is a mainstay around Casa de SoupAddict. And I’ll admit that I’ve had my fair share of the frozen halved-and-buttered French bread loaves.
They’re convenient, definitely, but they’re also kind of annoying. If the bread has thawed at any point — say, during shipping or stocking — the butter on the two halves melts and then fuses together on refreeze.
This makes it very difficult to get the halves apart cleanly with the seasoned butter evenly distributed, even with a sharp knife. And it’s a very messy process.
Soooo, annoy me enough and I’ll eventually get motivated to find a solution on my own. In this case, creating a Garlic Bread Seasoning recipe with all the flavors I love, enough to stash in the fridge for many loaves of garlic bread to come.
It’s super easy, and you can tweak to include your favorite herbs and spices!
Ingredient Notes
Garlic — this recipe calls for garlic powder. Garlic powder is produced from garlic cloves that have been dried and then ground. Ounce per ounce, garlic powder is more intense than fresh cloves, but fresh cloves have a brighter garlic flavor.
Using garlic powder allows the seasoning blend to last in the fridge for an extended amount of time. Freshly minced cloves — while delicious — would exude moisture into the seasoning blend.
Parmesan Cheese — this recipe calls for the finely grated (basically powdered) parmesan cheese that you find in the green cans at the grocery store. Why? While definitely not as flavorful as freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, the processed version has one distinct advantage: included among the ingredients are anti-caking agents, which keep the cheese fairly loose.
Otherwise, parm has a tendency to clump together.
If you want to use fresh parmesan cheese, my recommendation would be to leave it out of the seasoning blend that you store, and grate fresh cheese each time you need it. Leaving out the cheese also makes it shelf-stable, when prepared with dried herbs.
Dried Herbs — This blend has an Italian influence, and features dried basil, oregano, marjoram, and parsley. Why dried? For one thing, they’re shelf-stable — they won’t wilt or rot during storage. For another, the drying process concentrates their flavors, so you don’t need a lot to add an herby punch.
Plus, they’re convenient to keep on hand, so you can make a new batch of seasoning any time.
How to Make Homemade Garlic Bread Seasoning
The beauty of this seasoning blend is that there aren’t any complicated steps: Just measure in a roomy bowl and stir with a spoon! If the parm is clumpy, reach in with clean fingers and break up any little balls in the mix.
Pro Tip: dried herbs still have aromatic oils in their leaves that survive the drying process. You can release those oils by crushing and rubbing the dried leaves with your fingertips.
Garlic Bread Seasoning FAQs
How to store the seasoning?
Transfer the seasoning blend to an airtight jar or container. It will keep for many months!
Does it have to be refrigerated?
Dried herbs are shelf-stable, but if you add parmesan cheese, it’s recommended to keep it refrigerated. To be on the safe side, check the packaging of all of your ingredients, and if any of them recommend refrigeration for the ingredient, then refrigerate the spice blend.
Can you substitute fresh parm and herbs for the dried?
As a general answer, you can definitely season your garlic bread with fresh parm, garlic, and herbs. But two things: 1) the amounts in this recipe are not balanced for fresh ingredients, particularly as dried herbs are more intense than fresh.
And 2) baking leafy herbs exposed on bread in the oven might singe them at high temps. In other words, absolutely possible but It would take a little experimentation outside of this recipe to get it right, I think.
What can you use Garlic Bread Seasoning with?
So many things! Of course, you can make Easy Garlic Bread. But try these options, too:
- Garlic bread made with baguettes, naan, flatbread, or Texas toast
- Stir into mac & cheese
- Sprinkle over spaghetti and meatballs (or any Italian pasta dish)
- Liven up a green salad (especially a Caesar salad)
- Sprinkle on a cream cheese bagel
- Season hamburger meat prior to grilling
- Make a batch of croutons
- Sprinkle over pizza
- Make a compound butter, if you prepare garlic bread often
Garlic Bread Seasoning is super simple to whip up with just a few ingredients and keep on hand for all of your garlic bread cravings.
Pick up a beautiful loaf of crusty French bread and easy garlic bread made at home is just minutes away. Perfect as a side with soup! Which we sort of love around here.
Garlic Bread Seasoning
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup powdered/grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 2 teaspoons Kosher or coarse salt
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 2 teaspoons dried basil
- 2 teaspoons dried marjoram
- 2 teaspoons dried parsley
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black or white pepper
Instructions
- Mix together in a roomy bowl, breaking up any clumps in the cheese, and store in an airtight container in the fridge