Garlic and Cheese Flatbread with Herbs

posted on May 26, 2015 by Bianca Garcia

How often do you eat pizza? I love pizza. At my full-time job (I work for an awesome ad agency called Genuine Interactive) we get free catered lunch everyday. Fridays is pizza day, so I can eat free pizza every week if I want to.

After a few weeks though, I start to get a little tired of pizza. Even if we get pizza from different places each time, pizza on the regular just didn’t have as much magic as the pizza I’ve always loved. You know what I mean: homemade pizza, fancy pizza, the greasy pizza with extra cheese that I order with my friends for movie night, the one I eat post-run, or that paper-plated slice I scarf down after getting home late from a party.

But last weekend, as I was walking home drenched in sweat after a yoga class, I started craving pizza real bad. It didn’t matter that we were going to have Pizza Friday at work, I wanted pizza, and I wanted it now. Or now-ish. At least after I showered.

I was going to pass by the grocery store to get pizza dough and marinara sauce (yes, yes, I know I should make my own, but I like convenience/I am lazy) but I remembered that I still have a sheet of frozen puff pastry at home. I figured I could use that instead and make flatbread, which is still pretty close to pizza, just no sauce. And usually rectangular in shape.

My go-to pizza delivery order is either a veggie with extra cheese, or cheese with garlic and anchovies. But when I decided to make flatbread instead, I wanted to top it with a couple of my favorite herbs: chives and parsley.

I really like using chives and parsley to add a small burst of flavor to dishes, and the bright green color makes finished dishes look more appealing. I like adding chives to savory tarts, eggs, pasta, and other appetizers, but I also use parsley in pasta and other finger food. Some people say that parsley hardly has any flavor, but if you use enough, you’ll notice that it has a clean, almost lettuce-like taste.

I usually get flat parsley (also known as Italian parsley) but when I went to the grocery store, like my hair on a humid day, there was no choice but to go curly.

Curly leaf parsley has a sharper flavor than flat parsley, herbaceous and almost bitter, and it went really well with the chives and garlic. I also added a sprinkle of red pepper flakes because what’s ~~pizza~~ flatbread without chili pepper flakes? (The answer is: still flatbread.)

To begin, I chopped up garlic and mixed it with melted butter, then brushed that glorious mixture on the puff pastry. I topped it with shredded mozzarella, a classic cheese for melting on top of bread, as well as some shredded parmesan for some funk. After baking for just 20 minutes, my apartment was filled with the mouth-watering smell of garlic, butter, and cheese. I then generously topped the flatbread with snipped up parsley and chives. I wish I had some basil to add to the mix – I will do that next time.

The puff pastry becomes a thin buttery crust, perfect for melted cheesy goodness. This flatbread, I dare say, is actually as good as any other pizza I’ve craved.

Yield: makes 8-12 slices