It’s that time of year when friends and family come in and out of your home on what seems like a daily basis, seemingly driving you out of the house and your home. Although he waits for the company monsoon moving around his home, he is prepared for anything because he has a secret weapon: olive oil bread sauce.

Now, there’s a good chance some of you probably thought we were going to mention a casserole of some kind, but olive oil bread dip is so easy to make, why would you spend time with various concentrated soups?

Think about your favorite Italian restaurants. There’s always the amazing pasta dishes and perfectly sweet but not too sweet desserts, but when you first sit down they bring you really fresh Italian bread and some olive oil bread sauce. For the most part, he doesn’t even give it a second thought; you just go deep because it’s amazing.

The same should be true of your own home, especially when you have last-minute guests coming to visit. It could be a family member you haven’t seen in a while, or an old college roommate who is moving into the area and decided to look for you. You want to be a good host, even if it wasn’t planned, but part of being a good host means not being propped up in the kitchen talking over your shoulder while making sandwiches.

All you need are a few simple ingredients to make your guests feel like they’ve stepped into an Italian bistro:

  • Good Quality Olive Oil
  • Salt (the larger, Corsican crystals have great depth of flavor and texture to add)
  • Pepper (fresh broken is best in this application)
  • Crushed red pepper flakes
  • Minced garlic (again, fresh goes a long way, and you could even use a garlic press if you’re “pressed” for time)

Add your oil to a dish that has a center area that allows the ingredients to come together. Then add your garlic and take a few minutes to stir these two items together a bit. Follow this with your ground pepper, red pepper flakes, and salt. Stir one more time and you’re done. It’s really that simple.

The hardest thing about an olive oil bread dip appetizer can be how to deal with the bread part of the equation. You can always try to keep a loaf of inexpensive Italian bread from the grocery store on hand just in case. Perhaps the best thing to do, given a last-minute guest’s time crunch, is to keep a “tube” package of bread in your fridge. In the same way that you can open a cardboard tube for cookies or muffins, you can also find bread ready to bake in minutes. This way you can make your sauce and let it sit while you bake your bread and entertain. The dip will be spectacular!