The Artist Roasts: Garlic
I bake weekly. I haven't bought bread in close to a year and my cheap pizza stone has taken up permanent residence on the lower rack of my oven. I don't say this as a judgment of people who buy bread, I just really like baking. I'm fortunate to have a flexible schedule as a freelancer, (my new, positive self-descriptor replacing slacker and layabout) so I regularly incorporate bread making into the day's routine. I love the process of baking bread, and am reassured by the fact that I can control every ingredient that goes into the final product. I might be a little OCD.
As the weather has warmed over the course of the past few weeks I've gotten to thinking more about the economy of 
heating the oven. A hot oven is a lovely thing in the winter, making the kitchen a warm and inviting place, but in the summer it makes my thighs stick together and produces beads of sweat on my upper lip. I'm not willing to stop baking when the weather is hot, but I have been thinking of ways to get the most out of the time that I do have the oven running.
What I've started to do lately is roast garlic while I bake my bread. Roasted garlic is super useful to have around. It doesn't have the harsh burn of fresh garlic but is amazingly mellow and creamy and versatile. It is great thrown in with eggs, tossed in pasta with fresh basil and red pepper, spread over toast with a bit of cheese or used as a topping for pizza. It is 
especially awesome in homemade hummus. Try replacing 3-4 cloves of roasted garlic for every clove of fresh garlic that you would normally use.
Roasting garlic is simple. Whack off the top of the head of garlic so that the cloves are exposed. Give it a healthy glug of olive oil over the top, wrap it tightly in tinfoil and toss it in a 400°F oven. Bake it for 35 minutes. The cloves should be a rich brown and fantastically creamy. If you baked bread during the process, you now have something to put the garlic on. Bonus!