Garlic-Slathered Stretch Bread

The bread base is light, airy and chewy, and the topping, cheesy and garlicky.

The dough is a simple mix of bread flour, water, yeast, salt and sugar. It’s relatively wet and has long proofing times but no preferment is required.

The topping is applied to the shaped (by stetching, hence the name) flatbread before the final rise. It consists of an interesting spread made of mayonnaise (I used reduced fat), minced garlic, salt, olive oil and parmesan cheese topped with shredded mozzarella. I found the topping recipe as written to be too much: too salty, too oily, too cheesy….

When I made it this time, I reduced the amount of mayonnaise to ½ cup, omitted the salt and the oil from the spread and reduced the quantity of both cheeses by half. The 3 star rating is for the recipe as written but with just a few tweaks this bread lived up to its potential to be the ultimate garlic-cheese bread worthy of a 5-star rating.