The Ingredient You Should Be Using For Better Garlic Bread

From culinary influencers to famous chefs and everyday cooks, the battle for better garlic bread rages on. Crunchy or chewy, extra buttery or just barely coated, pressed vs powdered garlic — it's all on the table when creating the ultimate garlic bread recipe. Your breadmaking potential depends heavily on ingredients, so here's a perhaps unexpected recommendation from Food Network star Guy Fieri: hot sauce.

Though seemingly incompatible with standard garlic bread ingredients, hot sauce adds a winning kick to the classic side dish. But don't take our word for it: In their garlic bread recipe ranking, Kitchn chose Fieri's as the winner, beating out renowned chefs such as Rachel Ray and Ina Garten.

Before assuming that adding hot sauce to garlic bread is not your thing, you may want to consider how the ingredients and technique work together. Fieri's recipe suggestion is super customizable, so spicy food haters need not worry about firey mouths and upset stomachs.

In his Food Network recipe, Fieri doesn't give an exact measurement for the hot sauce, leaving it to individual tastebud tolerance. The chef incorporates the other garlic bread ingredients to absorb and complement the hot sauce — including butter, garlic, parmesan, parsley leaves, and scallions — before spreading the mix on a baguette. In a taste test of three famous garlic bread recipes (like the Kitchn, the outlet also compared both Ray and Garten's recipes), Insider admitted to initially worrying the hot sauce in Fieri's recipe would not work with the other ingredients. In the end, they concurred the ingredients balance one another well and the hot sauce adds a nice punch.

The type of hot sauce to use comes down to personal preference, as Fieri simply names "hot sauce" in the ingredients list. Use your go-to grocery store brand, mix it up with a new variety, or even make your own hot sauce – the options are limitless. If the idea of infinite choices and measurements stresses you out, Turkey and the Wolf chef Mason Hereford created a garlic bread recipe for Tabasco, which uses the company's original red hot sauce to create a vinaigrette that is spooned on top of the garlic bread after baking. While fairly different from Fieri's version (Hereford includes cream cheese, feta, olives, and pickled peppers, among other standout ingredients), there is a clear indication of how much hot sauce should be included.