Roasted garlic is a popular item around here.  We can get them in restaurants around town, a lot of local recipes here have roasted garlic in their dishes, and plenty of fresh garlic can be found in grocery stores and farmer’s markets.

Living in the Bay Area so close to Gilroy, you can’t help but grow to love garlic.  Gilroy is the self proclaimed Garlic Capital of the world.  That’s all they do here, grow garlic. In fact, when you drive past Gilroy you can smell garlic for a few miles as the garlic farms are in abundance here.  To pay homage to it’s” bread and butter” crop, Gilroy hosts an annual Gilroy Garlic Festival in the summer where everything sold is made with garlic.  They even sell their famous Garlic ice cream!  

Roasted garlic with a good baguette is one of those garlic dishes that is perfect on a weekend afternoon when the whole family can sit around the table with some crusty bread and squeeze the soft buttery garlic flesh out of the roasted garlic skin and spread it like butter on the baguette.  This is a messy appetizer, but oh so satisfying.  Half the fun is getting your hands dirty and enjoying squeezing the tender sweet garlic flesh out of its skin and spreading it on the bread.

I like to make roasted garlic in my pottery dish made by local potter Geri Peterson.  She has been making her signature garlic roaster for over a decade now – I know, because I bought my first garlic roaster from her 10 years ago.  Geri includes instructions on how to make roasted garlic in her pottery dish, and that’s what I did. I followed her instructions, and the roasted garlic turned out perfect!

Since my first garlic roaster pottery purchase from Geri, I have bought two more from her, worried that if one breaks, I will still have another one to use.  The roasted garlic turns out so good in this dish that I can’t think of what else would work.  You may have to improvise to make this dish if you don’t have an ovenproof dish that looks like Geri’s.  One idea is to wrap the garlic in aluminum foil and then bake it in the oven.  Give it a try! I’ve included pictures below so you can see what Geri’s pottery looks like.

As I mentioned, Geri includes instructions on how to use her pottery to make roasted garlic. I have her recipe below.

Here is my version of roasted garlic that is very similar to Geri’s with some minor modifications. Enjoy!

Roasted Garlic with Olive oil and Broth

Ingredients:

• 1 or 2 heads of garlic, or 1 large elephant garlic
• Olive oil
• Water or broth
• Salt & pepper
• Herbs such as rosemary, thyme and oregano

Directions:

• Cut the tops off the garlic and place them in the pottery dish.
• Drizzle olive oil all over the garlic and some in the dish.
• Pour 1/4 cup of broth or water in the dish.
• Sprinkle salt and pepper over garlic.  Add the herbs.
• Cover and place dish in oven and then turn on the oven to 350 degrees.
• Important: do not pre-heat oven for pottery dishes. Pottery cracks when it is exposed to drastic temperature changes. The best way to use pottery in the oven is to place it in a cool oven and then turn the oven on.
• Bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes.

• Take out of oven and serve warm with baguette