Cheese and Garlic Crack Bread (Pull Apart Bread)

Ingredients

• 1 crusty loaf, preferably sourdough or Vienna
• 1 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese (or other melting cheese)
• 100 g / 1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
2. Combine butter, garlic and salt in a heatproof bowl and melt in the microwave. Stir through parsley.
3. Cut the bread on a diagonal into 2cm/1″ diamonds but do not cut all the way through the bread.
4. Use your fingers or a knife to pry open each crack and drizzle in a teaspoon of butter and stuff in a pinch of cheese. This might sound like a bit of an effort, but I promise you it is worth it! You don’t need to be super neat, it’s nice to have some of the butter drizzled over the crust.
5. Brush surface with remaining butter.
6. Wrap with foil and bake for 20 minutes until the cheese has mostly melted, then unwrap and bake for 5 – 10 minutes more to make the bread nice and crusty.
7. Serve immediately. (See note 1 for best make ahead methods)