Tony’s popular recipe: French bread pizza

Tony Gemignani, pizza master and restaurateur

Like many of us, I grew up eating French bread pizzas. As a child you would typically have two options, get your mom to make one or buy a store. Stouffer’s was a popular frozen food brand that was sold nationwide. If I recall, they had thick cut pepperoni triangles. Over the years, especially when I was a bachelor, I made them for myself and my roommates. Now that I had a sourdough bread bakery, I had to sell them. I had the perfect sourdough baguette. I slathered it with tomato sauce, mozzarella and thick-cut pepperoni. It baked in 5 minutes and it turned out beautiful. I took a bite of this masterpiece and it didn’t taste right. I said to myself, is the sauce bad? What went wrong? The taste of the tomatoes and the baguette had a very sour sour taste, it was not good. It took me a few hours or so and I figured it out. It was the wrong bread.

Remember it’s called French bread pizza and I used a sourdough baguette. The French traditionally do not like the sourness of sourdough bread, they prefer a slightly sweet baguette. If you’ve ever made a super sour dough pizza with tomato sauce on it, it might taste like the sauce went sour. It doesn’t always happen with pizza, but sometimes it can. Balance is the key to making food great. My baguette is super sour which really didn’t give me the nostalgic flavor profile I was looking for. I took it off the menu and if I had to do this again, which I did, I would choose a baguette. When I did it was absolutely amazing and as before it was super crunchy. It took me back to when I was a child; it was a beautiful day. I also called my mom and asked just to be sure and she confirmed that she always used French bread when we were kids. Mother always knows.

These can be sold freshly baked, take ‘n’ bake or frozen.

Tony’s popular recipe: French bread pizza

Author:

Type of recipe: pizza

  • 1 French baguette cut in half and then cut in half crosswise
  • 3 oz tomato sauce
  • 3-4 oz shredded whole milk mozzarella
  • 14-18 pieces of pepperoni (preferably thick cut cup n char)
  • Grated Romano or Parmesan
  • Garlic oil
  • Dried oregano
  1. Cut your baguette in half lengthwise and then cut in half.
  2. Place your baguette inside out and bake for 2 minutes
  3. Take your bread out of the oven and add tomato sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni.
  4. Place back in the oven.
  5. When your pizza is finished baking, take your pizza out of the oven and cut it into the desired slices.
  6. Finish with garlic oil, Romano and oregano and serve.

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