Jan 21, 2015, Updated Sep 11, 2024 This recipe started with a deep dig through the freezer in search of a baguette to serve as a vehicle for regular old garlic bread. With nothing but a freezer-burnt hot dog bun to work with, I thought, hey – we can do this from the ground up. I’m totally into the instant yeast lately – quick rise, rapid rise, bread machine yeast – it’s all (shockingly perhaps) the same thing. The perk of using it over traditional active dry yeast is that you get to skip the first rise altogether. Which make weeknight bread-baking totally do-able! So that’s what I did. I adapted from the Goat Cheese, Red Grape and Rosemary Focaccia recipe I’d had such great results with, which was a perfect starting point. They took no more effort than stirring flour and water together, with only a 30 minute rise. And the results were unreasonably yummy. Comfort food bliss. Hot, tender, fluffy bread baked under garlic butter and a blanket of stretchy, gooey mozzarella. They reminded me of the cheese fingers I’d get at pizza places when I was a kid – they served them with the donair sauce I described here. Garlic on garlic! We used ours to scoop up spaghetti and meat sauce, but they’d be perfect as a (game day?) party appetizer served with hot marinara sauce or Lebanese Toum sauce (from same blog post as above).
