Homemade Texas Toast is the better BBQ side

What is Texas Toast?

Having spent part of my childhood in Texas, I have eaten plenty of Texas Toast in my day. The ubiquitous BBQ side, it’s usually made with squishy double-thick sliced white bread lathered up with plenty of butter and griddled.

The legend goes that Kirby’s Pig Stand in Denton, Texas once ordered thick sliced bread from the bakery, only to get bread that was too thick to fit in a toaster. Not being wasteful sorts, one of the cooks suggested buttering and grilling the bread. Beaumont, Texas also claims the idea, but like all of these local food legends, it’s hard to know exactly the origin.

What’s not in dispute is that buttering and grilling fresh bread is delicious. It adds texture and crunch and so much flavor plus cooking it this way creates a protective crust around the bread that prevents it from getting soggy if you make sandwiches with your BBQ from the bread.

Having eaten plenty of drippy brisket sandwiches, this bread beats the pants off of squishy white bread any day.

Why Homemade Texas Toast is superior

When I lived in Texas, you could easily go to the grocery store and buy loaves of double-thick sliced bread. Outside of Texas, it’s pretty difficult to find such bread.

Cleaner ingredients

Frozen toast: Yes, you can buy frozen Texas toast outside of Texas, but let’s take a gander at the very science ingredients from Kroger brand frozen Texas toast. “Bread: Enriched Wheat Flour (Flour, Ascorbic Acid Added as a Dough Conditioner, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Soybean Oil, Yeast, Sugar, Salt, Calcium Propionate (Preservative), Microbial Enzymes, Spread: Soybean Oil, Water, Palm Oil, Dried Garlic, Salt, Contains 2% or Less of: Mono- and Diglycerides, Natural Flavor, Dried Parsley, Whey, Beta-Carotene (for Color).”

Homemade toast: Here’s my list for my homemade Texas toast: Milk, water, butter, honey, instant yeast

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, baking soda, organic unbleached all-purpose flour, salt, butter. For garlic version: Butter, olive oil, garlic, salt.

Better texture

Slow griddle this bread in the way that I show you and you’ll get a crunchy outside with a soft inside that is vastly superior to anything you can buy. It’s a little bit like an eggless savory French toast in awesomeness.

Takes just as long to make

Yes, I’m advocating for you to start with homemade bread (use English Muffin Bread for the fastest homemade bread you can bake), but beyond that, it takes the exact amount of time to make homemade TX toast vs. the frozen stuff.

Why you’ll love homemade Texas Toast

1. Flexibility: You can use ANY kind of bread you’d like to make this. Homemade definitely tastes better, but Texas toast is more of a how than it is a what. And because it’s toast, if your bread is a little stale, that doesn’t matter a lick.
2. Insanely good: We all know buttered bread is ethereal, but add in a layer of crunch and maybe the savory edge of garlic, and you’ve actually managed to put lightning in a bottle.
3. Freeze for later: Once you spread on your butter or garlic spread, you can easily freeze individual slices, making this an easy side to pull from the freezer on spaghetti night or a random Tuesday you want to make some awesome cheese bread.

Process for making Homemade Texas Toast

1. Cut: Slice your bread into thick slices. For bread loaves, shoot for 1″ thick slices. On a standard 9×5″ bread loaf, that works out to about 8 slices/loaf. For rolls, simply cut them in half.
2. Spread: For the garlic version, smoosh the garlic, olive oil, butter, and salt into a paste. Slather both sides of the bread with either plain butter or the garlic butter. Be generous here, allotting about 1 tablespoon of butter per slice.
3. Oven version (the best for use with fresh garlic): Place slices of the buttered bread in a 400F oven for 12-14 minutes, flipping the bread over about halfway through baking. You should see light brown edges and feel some slight crunch on the bread. Do not bake further so that the inside of the bread is still soft.
4. Griddled version (best for butter or for use with garlic powder): Preheat a cast iron grill pan or griddle for about 5 minutes over medium heat. You can use this time to butter your bread. After 5 minutes, turn down the heat to low and place your bread across the pan. Toast the bread undisturbed for about 4 minutes and then flip it to the other side to toast for another 4 minutes. Past that, you can decide if you want it toastier or not.
5. Serving: Serve this bread hot!!!

How to freeze Texas toast for easy baking later

1. Freeze slices: Lather up your sliced bread with the plain butter or garlic butter. Set the slices on a parchment

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   -lined baking sheet. Freeze for about 2 hours.
2. Gather and wrap: Gather up the pieces into a loaf, placing a piece of parchment

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   between each slice. Wrap the whole loaf in plastic, and then place the wrapped loaf in a plastic bag. Texas toast wrapped like this can keep for up to 3 months.
3. Bake frozen: When you want to eat your Texas toast, break off as many slices as you’d like from your loaf. Set the frozen slices on a parchment

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   -lined baking sheet and bake at 400 for about 10 minutes.

Tricks for making swoon-worthy Texas toast

1. Butter the bread like you mean it: Be generous with the butter. It’s what makes this bread so delicious. Spread the butter or garlic spread edge-to-edge in a layer thick enough that you can see it on the bread.
2. Low and slow: It makes sense that Texas toast came about in a BBQ restaurant because the principle of low and slow cooking is needed here. Preheat up the griddle and then back off on the heat so that the butter has time to soak into the bread and get crusty before burning. The preheating will give you gorgeous grill marks, and the low heat will do its work to make for perfect texture.
3. Match your cooking method with your choice of garlic: If you use fresh garlic, do NOT cook this on the griddle. The fresh garlic will burn and that will taste terrible. Fresh garlic will do fine in the oven. If you want griddled garlic bread TX toast, simply use garlic powder.

Best meals to serve with Texas toast

• Spaghetti and meatballs
• Meatballs really of any kind
• BBQ of any kind
• Use it in place of buns for burgers or patty melts.
• Turn it into French Dip sandwiches.
• Turn it into a tuna melt
• Sprinkle with provolone and set it under a broiler under the cheese turns bubbly and slightly brown for the best cheese bread ever.

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