Garlic Black Bread

  

In celebration of Veganuary, I am hosting a vegan food art challenge together with Aleksandra and Hayley over on Instagram. This means I will also be posting vegan recipes over here. The fourth week is all about snacks and drinks!
If you want to join us, check out this post for all the prompts and inspiration!
This is one of my favourite snacks to make. It's some black bread that is fried with garlic. If you're wondering what is black bread, it's rye bread but due to the colour of the bread, we call it "must leib" in Estonian or "black bread". If you've never had rye bread before, do try it out! I'm not sure I'm even able to describe the taste but it's really flavourful and denser than regular bread.

As for the snacks, you can serve them with a side of sauce. Typically I use sour cream to dip mine in, but for this challenge, I used a similar sauce as I did for the cauliflower "wings" wrap last week. I used a vegan cream(this one), bit of salt, pepper, garlic and tiny bit of mustard. Usually I do a similar dip with sour cream too.

I know most people make their garlic black bread in the oven, but I find frying them on a pan quicker.

INGREDIENTS
300 g / 0.6 lbs of rye bread
3-5 garlic cloves
2-4 tbsp of rapeseed oil
salt to taste

Cut the bread into bite-sized pieces. Mince your garlic.

Add 2 tbsp of oil to a pan and heat the oil over medium heat. 

Add your bread to the pan. Make sure your bread is covered with oil and add more oil if needed. Leave your bread on the pan a bit and stir until some parts of the bread has turned crispy. Repeat until most sides of the bread are crispy.

Add your minced garlic to the bread and stir. Your goal is to cook the garlic a bit but not burn it. Lower the heat if necessary. I've found that stirring constantly helps the most. You want your bread to be covered with the garlic and the garlic to be fragrant.

Remove the pan from the heat and sprinkle over salt to taste. I like mine saltier, so I add more salt. As I pour the garlic bread into a bowl, I mix the bread again and add more salt if needed.

Serve with a sour cream or a vegan sour cream alternative sauce.

NOTES
The key to make this recipe, is not to burn your garlic. Garlic doesn't need a lot of cooking time so really watch your pan when you add in the garlic.
Speaking of garlic, I'm of the mindset that more garlic is better. 
What is really great about this recipe is that, you don't have to have all sides of the bread crispy. If some sides are soft, it's easier to eat anyway and balances out the texture.
Adding a bit of spring onion to your sauce can also be a nice touch so experiment with that!