One of my absolute favorite meals is French Bread Pizza. I used to buy Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza whenever I’d get the craving but upon hearing that my favorite frozen pizza brand contained trans fats, something I wasn’t aware of until ABC News broke the story last week I decided that it was just the push I needed to cut out buying frozen prepared foods from our home altogether.
I won’t even go into how much all those frozen prepared foods cut into a grocery budget.
It wasn’t as if we bought a lot of frozen pizzas, or frozen prepared foods for that matter, to begin with. We live in a rural area that has a HUGE farming community, ourselves included since we raise our own beef and pork and have a garden (fingers crossed for this year). Due in part to where we live and how we live now, we’ve removed TONS of convenience foods from our diets over the last 10 years so removing frozen convenience foods wasn’t a painful one; that is until I craved a French bread pizza the other day.
Since I had already planned on making Calzones for our Friday night dinner, I decided to include French bread pizzas as well. We already had all the ingredients except for the bread.
And before you ask, bread making is not one of the things I do well, so a quick stop in my grocer’s bakery netted me a large (read: very, very long) loaf of French bread for only 99 cents. (SCORE!)
(Better than Stouffer’s if I do say so myself) Easy French Bread Pizza
Ingredients:
One loaf of french bread (or even regular sliced bread).
Olive oil (about 2-3 TBS).
Pizza sauce (homemade or store bought).
Various pizza toppings: sausage, pepperoni, peppers, olives, chicken (whatever works for you!)
Grated mozzarella cheese.
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
Start by cutting the loaf of French bread into fourths (or thirds or half if your french bread isn’t crazy long like mine was).
Once cut, slice each one down the middle so that you have eight slices of french bread.
Brush each slice with olive oil and place into the oven for about five minutes. Just long enough for the olive oil to cook in and the bread to “crisp” up a bit.
Take the bread out of the oven and let cool slightly (a minute or two while you assemble your toppings if you haven’t done so).
From there it’s pretty simple; add your pizza sauce, meats, veggies, and cheese.
We’re mostly a meat lover’s household so we used hot Italian sausage (from the hogs we butchered), pepperoni and mozzarella cheese but you could easily include onions, green peppers, or anything else you have on hand.
Place your topped slices of french bread back into the oven and cook for 10-15 minutes until the cheese is melted, hot and bubbly.
Say a prayer of thanks for meat, bread, and lots of lots cheese. NOW DIG IN!
This is quite possibly one of the most frugal recipes you can make. It makes a great dinner for two or a quick lunch or dinner option and the best part is that you can get the kids involved by letting them do just about everything except for slicing the bread and operating the oven, unless you have older kids and you trust them with those things. (And then I say, let the minions cook for you!)
The next time I make this I’m going to try my hand at making my own french bread and using homemade pizza sauce. We have tomato sauce that we canned last summer in the basement. This will bring the cost of the french bread pizzas even lower.
I’m not boycotting Stouffer’s or Nestle but I can make the same thing they’re selling cheaper, better tasting and healthier for my family and I’m not sacrificing my craving for French bread pizzas at all so it’s a completely win-win situation in my book.
What are some of your favorite French bread pizza toppings?
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