What’s the fastest way to get pizza on the table? Make your own pizza bread. It’s a hugely versatile concept. You can make an individual “pizza” on a single slice of bread, top it with sauce, toppings, cheese and blast that in a hot toaster oven.
Or you could do what I love to do: Slice a ciabatta loaf in half and give it the pizza treatment.
For the tomato sauce, you could simply use jarred sauce, you could puree some canned tomatoes (san marzano if you’ve got ’em), or, if you’re like me, you probably have a stash of homemade tomato sauce in the fridge. I tend to roast plum tomatoes, cut in halve and drizzled with olive oil, in the oven on Sundays to incorporate into dishes throughout the week. My homemade tomato sauce—punctuated by roasted garlic bulbs—gets spread on the ciabatta loaf. Not too much sauce or your bread will get soggy.
On any pizza night, I usually make one with veggies, one with meat. Start with thinly shaved red onion on both sides.
On the veggie only side, I pile on slices of roasted red and yellow pepper, along with some sliced kalamata olives and a few cloves of roasted garlic—which I also usually have in the fridge for moments like this.
Time to lay down the cheese. You can use shredded mozzarella or, if you find yourself short on that ingredient, blend 2-3 shredded cheeses. Here I’m mixing half and half smoked mozzarella and muenster cheese.
On the meat pizza bread, I’m adding a row of pepperoni on top of the cheese so it gets a little crispy.
Into a 350 F oven that goes for about 20 minutes—you’re looking for a bit of golden brown in that cheese. They’re ready and looking delicious.
Slice the pizza bread into squares and dig in!
— Trish Hennessy
A Year in Sandwiches 