What is the typical head of garlic we see in our produce stores?
Garlic, or allium sativum, is a flavoring that goes back to antiquity and today is essential to nearly all cuisines. In our modern stores, we usually find two to three-inch bulbs that contain about a dozen individual cloves. There are two common types of garlic: “soft neck” with a fibrous stem that dries into a grass-like top that can be braided — sometimes you see these braided chains of garlic heads hanging in a store or in a restaurant; and “hard neck” that has a long, hard central stem surrounded by firm and intensely flavored cloves.
