We Style-Examined 11 Manufacturers of Frozen Garlic Bread—Right here Are Our Favorites

I’ll by no means flip down a slice of garlic bread, particularly when it is contemporary out of the oven and nonetheless heat. It is scrumptious served alongside an enormous plate of spaghetti and meatballs or a bowl of tomato soup—although most individuals would most likely be pleased to eat it by itself, too. One other bonus: Garlic bread is fast and simple to whip up. All it’s a must to do is make a aromatic butter with minced garlic and loads of contemporary parsley, smear it on some crusty bread, then bake it till it is good and toasty. So simple as it’s, premade garlic bread might be useful while you wish to get dinner on the desk stat. That is when the frozen stuff is available in: The bread comes sliced, buttered, and able to bake, so you’ll be able to pop it into the oven and concentrate on cooking your precise dinner. The query is: Which model is value shopping for?

To search out the very best frozen garlic bread, our editors taste-tested 11 broadly obtainable manufacturers. We heated them based on bundle instructions and sampled them in random order, with out figuring out which was which. We then tabulated the outcomes and topped an general winner, together with a worthy runner-up.

The Standards

Garlic bread must be wealthy and buttery, with a distinguished, nice garlic taste that is not overwhelming or acrid. The garlic ought to style contemporary and barely mellowed out from cooking; it mustn’t style uncooked and sharp, and positively not bitter or metallic like jarred garlic. Every chew must be well-seasoned however not overly salty. The bread itself must be properly crisp and toasty with out being too robust to tear into, with a fluffy, tender inside. The bread must also not be mushy the place it has soaked within the butter.

Frozen garlic bread is bought in a few totally different varieties. Some are baguette-style, during which a baguette is sliced crosswise into rounds or break up lengthwise into two halves. It is also frequent to see garlic bread bought as “Texas toast,” a variant of thickly sliced white sandwich bread that’s buttered and toasted on each side. And whereas Texas toast does not need to include garlic, all of the variations of frozen Texas toast we included on this style take a look at had been flavored with garlic butter, making them reputable garlic-bread contenders.

General Winner

365 by Entire Meals Market Garlic Texas Toast

Nearly all our tasters liked this garlic bread from Entire Meals. “I’ve no complaints! The flavour is sweet, traditional, not fancy,” our editorial director, Daniel, wrote. “Fluffy bread, good golden crispy crust.” Like Daniel, I appreciated its gentle, crisp texture and garlicky taste. Our affiliate editorial director, Megan, famous that she’d “truly purchase this”—excessive reward coming from her!—and our visuals editor, Jessie, thought it was pleasantly “savory, salty, buttery, wealthy, and garlicky.” In different phrases, the whole lot garlic bread must be. 

Runner-Up

Furlani Texas Toast

Although this providing wasn’t fairly garlicky sufficient for Daniel, he nonetheless loved its “fluffy inside, crispy outdoors.” Like Daniel, our affiliate culinary editor, Laila, wished this bread was extra garlic-forward: “It wants extra butter and stronger garlic to really feel like actual garlic bread.” Our affiliate visuals director, Amanda, nonetheless, thought this garlic bread had a “good steadiness” and appreciated the “good char on prime.” Equally, Megan and Jessie favored the bread’s crisp, crunchy texture.

The Contenders

• 365 by Entire Meals Market Garlic Texas Toast
• Bowl & Basket Garlic Texas Toast
• Bowl & Basket Italian-Fashion Garlic Bread
• Furlani Garlic Texas Toast
• Julian’s Butter & Garlic Conventional Baguette
• New York Bakery The Authentic Texas Toast With Actual Garlic
• Pepperidge Farm Texas Toast Garlic Bread
• Pepperidge Farm Garlic Bread
• Cease & Store Crusty Garlic Bread
• Cease & Store Garlic Texas Toast
• Dealer Joe’s Garlic Gondolas

Key Takeaways and Conclusion

Frozen garlic bread usually is available in two varieties: Texas toast—which is sliced bread unfold with butter and sometimes flavorings like garlic and herbs—or a loaf or baguette unfold with garlic butter. For this style take a look at, we sampled merchandise from each classes.

Most garlic bread is made with white bread, butter and/or oil, salt, minced or crushed garlic, and dried herbs. Some manufacturers might incorporate garlic powder and pure and/or synthetic flavorings to reinforce the bread’s taste, together with turmeric and annato extracts for colour. Ascorbic acid is steadily used as a dough conditioner, which helps strengthen gluten and enhance the feel of the dough because it bakes. 

Our winner, 365 by Entire Meals Market Garlic Texas Toast, is made with actual butter—an ingredient that, surprisingly, seems in solely 4 of the 11 merchandise we tasted. Most different manufacturers use a mix of vegetable oils (usually palm and/or soybean oil) and attempt to replicate butter’s pure creaminess and tang by incorporating buttermilk, whey, and/or lactic acid. Our runner-up, Furlani Texas Toast, accommodates no butter and is made with soybean and palm oil, and makes use of dried garlic as a substitute of contemporary. Although our editors thought our runner-up may have been extra flavorful, they nonetheless appreciated the bread’s crispness.

Our editors usually most well-liked Texas toast to the loaves: The sliced bread baked extra persistently within the oven, leading to evenly melted butter slices that had been crisp and golden brown on the surface and tender and fluffy inside. The baguette-style loaves typically suffered from a mushy inside, the results of the garlic-butter mix soaking into the crumb and steaming it to an unlucky texture; Texas toast–type merchandise prevented this by having the buttered surfaces at all times be on the outside.

Although we ready every garlic bread based on the bundle instructions, we discovered the cooking time was inadequate for many loaves. Even after separating the bread into halves and baking for the instructed time, many had been nonetheless underbaked and never scorching sufficient. Because of this, we advocate adjusting the oven temperature and time as wanted to completely heat and toast the garlic bread to your liking.

Our Testing Methodology

All style exams are carried out with manufacturers fully hidden and with out dialogue. Tasters style samples in random order. For instance, taster A might style pattern one first, whereas taster B will style pattern six first. That is to stop palate fatigue from unfairly giving anyone pattern a bonus. Tasters are requested to fill out tasting sheets, rating the samples based on numerous standards. All knowledge is tabulated, and outcomes are calculated with no editorial enter to supply essentially the most neutral illustration of precise outcomes attainable.