Pull-Apart Garlic Bread

October. The October I love — rain and color and introspection and the oden on the stove and the candles lit and the apartment a warm cave, the cave where the writing happens, the cave where the soup simmers, the cave where the woman lives who has found, at thirty-nine, the exact life she was supposed to live, not the life she planned but the life that emerged, the way dashi emerges from kombu: slowly, through patience, through heat, through the overnight soak of twenty years of practice.

I made hayashi rice on a particularly gray day — the beef stew over rice, the comfort food that gets richer the grayer the sky, the direct relationship between weather and umami. Portland in October requires umami. The sky demands it. The rain insists on it. The body, cold and damp from the walk to the farmers market, needs the warm, rich, deep food that says: you are home. You are safe. The stew is ready. Sit down.

Miya's Halloween costume this year: "a recipe card." She made it herself — a large piece of cardboard cut into a rectangle, with Fumiko's miso soup recipe written on it in Japanese (Miya's handwriting, not Fumiko's, but close enough, the characters recognizable, the effort visible). She wore the cardboard like a sandwich board and walked door to door and said: "I am a recipe card. Do you want to know what I say?" and then she read the recipe, in Japanese, to every neighbor who stood at their door with candy, confused and delighted. The confusion was the costume. The delight was Miya. The Japanese read aloud on a Portland sidewalk on Halloween was the inheritance made public, the practice made visible, the chain worn like a costume by a child who has become the chain.

The hayashi rice was already doing its work that gray Portland afternoon—the umami deep and steady, the apartment warm, everything exactly right—and what I wanted alongside it was something to tear, something soft and buttery and undemanding, something that asked nothing of me except that I pull it apart. Miya came home in her recipe-card costume, cardboard swinging, still reading Fumiko’s miso soup to anyone who would listen, and I had this pull-apart garlic bread waiting on the table, warm from the oven, because some days the right food is just the food that’s there when you sit down.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 loaf Italian or sourdough bread (about 1 lb)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 375°F (190°C). Tear off a large sheet of aluminum foil, enough to wrap the whole loaf.
Make the garlic butter. In a small bowl, combine the softened butter, minced garlic, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper. Stir until smooth and fully mixed.
Score the bread. Using a serrated knife, cut the bread in a crosshatch pattern—slicing down every 1 inch in both directions, stopping just before you reach the bottom crust so the loaf stays in one piece.
Fill the cuts. Gently spread the garlic butter into every cut, pressing it down into the crevices with a butter knife or small spatula. Drizzle the olive oil lightly over the top. If using mozzarella, tuck shreds into the cuts as well.
Wrap and bake. Wrap the loaf tightly in the foil and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes until the butter is fully melted and the bread is heated through.
Open and finish. Unwrap the foil, folding it down around the sides to expose the top of the loaf. Return to the oven and bake an uncovered additional 5 minutes until the top is lightly golden and the edges are just crisp.
Serve immediately. Bring the whole loaf to the table and let everyone pull apart their own pieces. Best eaten warm, alongside a rich stew or simply on its own.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pull-Apart Garlic Bread — The Warm Thing You Make When the Sky Has Decided