I'll see your cheese/meat dip and raise you Basil Butter Garlic Bread(sticks)

This past Friday was the second meeting of the Brews Brothers beer club, and it featured the first ever Cheap Beer Challenge!  (which is a lot like James Franco and Ann Hathaway hosting the Oscars...it sounded like a decent idea when it was first proposed, but when you get into it you ask - why the f#ck did we decide to do this???? Its not that funny and I'm a little annoyed/sick to my stomach that its still happening) My roommate Chris also decided to role out his new crockpot for its first public offering and he cooked up some cheesy, meaty, dipping sauce.  Not to be completely outdone I whipped up some basil butter garlic bread to dip in to the dipping sauce.  Basically anything to not taste the cheap beer (which, as it turns out, pretty much all looks and tastes the same anyways...)

the basil butter garlic bread(sticks) recipe is one of the easiest to make and one of the most delicious (and they make a great first impression...I think Megan can attest to that :p ).  This particular bread is even easy to make by hand.  After combining all the dry ingredients and then mixing in the wet ones you basically knead the dough for about 8 minutes, let it rest for an hour, and then roll it out, cut it, bake it, dip it, eat it.  The trick with this recipe is to cut the dough in the above finished pattern BEFORE lathering with melted butter and topping off with garlic salt, kosher salt, and dried (or fresh) basil.  This allows the butter to coat the insides of the cuts, as opposed to just resting on the surface (although its freakin' butter...it tastes good either way).

One final note about this recipe - yah gotta really toast it!  For the bread sticks to be effective at the end you must make sure to really get a good and golden brown crusting on the bottom of the bread.  I used a stone for  maximum heat retention/minimum heat recovery for the oven this time!  The top of the bread sticks won't toast up as obviously because of the salt and butter lathered on top of it...so check the bottom.

On a non bread related note...recovering from a cheap beer challenge is not pleasant.  Its cheap for a reason - all the delicious basil butter garlic bread cannot remedy that!

Recipe to follow!