I was floored when I came across today’s featured recipe. I’d made it a thousand times – usually when I had nothing planned for dinner and very little in larder. Now, it’s an official ‘dish’! Have you ever thrown together a BBQ Chicken Garlic Bread Pizza?
Who among us – food lovers and home cooks – hasn’t, at one time or another, resorted to ready-dressed, supermarket garlic bread as an adjunct to, or even part of the main event of a hasty supper?
An addictive habit
It’s an addictive habit for a number of reasons. First and foremost, mozzarella cheese and garlic on crusty bread is like a blank canvass to an artist. You can turn it into a depiction of anything your imagination can come up with.
But by far, the culinary classic most celebrated on Garlic Bread is the universally beloved Pizza. Whether you get one from the store or make it yourself, you’re already half way to an ad hoc pizza.
Starter Kit
Today’s featured recipe can be viewed as a sort of ‘Starter Kit’ for the Garlic Bread experimenter. It requires only a few well-chosen ingredients and minimal skill to accomplish. And everybody you serve it to will love it. And love you for serving it.
The garlic bread needs only mozzarella cheese, fresh garlic and chopped fresh parsley. And the toppings can be as simple as shredded cooked chicken, your fave BBQ sauce and some slivered red onion. Which, by the way, is today’s featured recipe…
My go-to formula
I have a fully-perfected, go-to combination of toppings for my garlic bread pizzas. There are always thinly sliced mushrooms and jumbo Spanish olives. And I love any (and all) colours of bell peppers.
Protein actors on my garlic bread stage can include anything I have leftover from previous meals. Have you ever noticed how magical it is, that you can put anything savoury on a pizza and it just works?
Yo0u could just as easily use Marinara sauce instead of BBQ in today’s recipe, and call it ‘Classic Chicken Garlic Bread Pizza’….
Simplicity the key…
As with so many other classic dishes, simplicity is the key, here. You don’t a dozen toppings to make your pizza the the ‘All Dressed’. Much less, the ‘Special’.
A pizzaiolo at my go-to pizzaria, San Marino (a charming, authentic, one-off, family joint just a few streets away) once explained to me, simplicity is the very essence of the perfect pizza.
The original pizza, as we know it, was the Margarita – which uses only sauce, cheese and fresh Basil leaves. But it uses the best available exemplars of those classic ingredients, in perfect proportions. Put together in a classic, artistic way.
My take
I’m glad someone out there in Internetland has finally legitimized the Garlic Bread Pizza as a ‘real’ dish by writing a post on it.
And I hope that post – and this one – will help folks feel more comfortable serving it – as a family supper, to guests as a casual dinner MAIN, or even (as pictured above), for drinks-party nibbles…
~ Maggie J.