French Bread Pizza

A few days ago, someone asked me if I ever made any of the Pioneer Woman's recipes.  I believe I have only made three, but I watch her show on Food Network every Saturday, I own her original cookbook, I read her daily blog, and I love her recipes.  Some of my recipes are very similar...such as these French bread pizzas.  I opened an email with her daily blog not long ago to find pictures of very similar pizzas we make in our home.  We made these for dinner tonight, because they are very easy and they're not really in the oven long enough to heat up the house.  I definitely plan my menus around the Texas summers, y'all!  Was that too Paula Deen?

The variety of pizzas we had this evening were cheese, pepperoni and mushroom, tomato, and sausage and green olive.  Because Wal-Mart no longer carries pre-packaged sausage crumbles, I purchased a one-pound package of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage.  I tore the sausage into pieces as I was putting it in the skillet, then broke it up with my spoon as I was stirring it around.  To make ground meat smaller, I mash it with a potato masher.

sausage crumbles

I couldn't find pre-sliced green olives, so I purchased the smallest jar I could find and sliced them myself.  I actually sliced all of the olives from the jar and placed them back in the original container to store them.

I like to use these French steak rolls from the Wal-Mart bakery when I can find them.  I cut them in half lengthwise (horizontally) before assembling.

I use Hunt's Garlic & Herb spaghetti sauce for the pizza sauce.  It's cheaper than pizza sauce in the jar and we prefer the taste.  Believe me, we make these enough that we have tried almost everything.  You will see the tomato pizza has a pesto sauce instead of the tomato sauce.  Yummy!  So, the basic assembling process is 1) cut the rolls in half and place them cut-side up on a baking sheet; 2) spread your preferred sauce on each bread half; 3) top with shredded mozzarella cheese; 4) add your favorite toppings.

Your oven should be preheating at 400 degrees during this process.  Place the pizzas on the top rack in the oven.  It should take about 10 minutes to get all the cheese melted nicely on top.

Print French Bread Pizza Recipe

Hope you enjoy these as much as we do!!

Collette :)