French bread pizza (I seriously made a video about...)

french bread pizza is this american school lunch abomination we always had it fridays at my elementary school you take a big soft white loaf that no frenchman would recognize as being french or bread probably you cut it into big boats on a baking sheet and soak it in plenty of olive oil or butter or margarine and maybe some seasoning like it's garlic bread if you don't soak some fat in there it ends up being really dry most recipes have you toast the pieces in the oven for a few minutes if you don't do that the final thing ends up being super soggy then you smooth on some pizza sauce top with cheese and bake until the cheese is melted there you go cut that up and lauren said it tastes like a busy mom in the 80s just doing her best you know it's a good meal concept and i'm sure it could be improved first by actually browning the cheese but here's why people don't usually do that fully baked bread will burn at the temperatures at which cheese browns that's why the cheese on french bread pizza is usually pretty pallid i tried covering the exposed edges in little strips of aluminum foil that was a pain and the cheese stuck to it you want to see the easy thing that i found works dabbing it with water that's all a pastry brush into a bowl of water liberally dab the exposed edge of bread right before it goes in the oven if you do it too far in advance the water soaks too far deep into the bread there you go much better and you might get a few charred spots still but it's nothing you can't just pinch off those edges are not soggy at all the water has evaporated and they've browned nicely the water just slowed them down already quite a bit tastier but let's start fresh rather than think of this as garlic bread with pizza toppings let's think of it like an open-faced panini a sandwich sized ciabatta cut in half oven-safe pan on the stove big knob of butter turn the heat on medium you could use olive oil but butter is tasty and it's great at being its own thermometer when it's starting to bubble yeah i'm gonna season my pan not my bread just a little salt that i want to fry into that bread surface mop up all that butter and seasoning into the cut sides and then it's time to smash this is a brick wrapped in foil but anything flat and heavy will do it smashing that bread down gets you really thorough browning my oven is cold i'm just going to flip on the top element the broiler it heats in like two minutes ah you can see the outside rim of the pan is not as hot i'll rotate these around and give them another minute beautiful flip them onto their back sides and i'm gonna put in a little olive oil to fry the bottoms it tastes good in combination with the butter and it's less likely to burn in this next phase turning my heat off because electric burners like these take a long time to cool down if i was doing this on gas i'd probably just turn it to low while i dress the pizzas you can get a nice little effect if you put some big pieces of fresh herb on the sauce layer whole parsley leaves or half basil leaves a little parmesan topped with some mozzarella and i want those parsley leaves poking through semi-covered they're gonna look real pretty and the key step that i'm very happy i figured out brush all the exposed bread with water that should keep it safe under the grill as brits would call it just as we can keep ourselves safe on the internet with surf shark the sponsor of this video now that i got that vax i'm excited to travel again surfsharkvpn will be my buddy you hit connect on your computer or phone and now your connection is encrypted which is good for public wi-fi and airports for example plus your connection is passing through a surfshark server anywhere you want like almost literally anywhere there's a surfshark server by going through this server in atlanta i can bypass internet censorship in any other country i won't get locked out of my bank account for trying to access via a server in another country i won't get hit with location-based price discrimination and i can get around geo-restrictions on content even stuff i've paid for i can't get from certain countries so i've got to go through a surf shark server in another country boom i can watch what i want a surf shark subscription gets you access to tons of other online security services anonymous searching password protection all that do you and me both a favor and sign up with my link in the description use my code adamragucia and you'll get 83 off plus an additional three months for free use that link and code in the description for 83 off thank you surf shock all right now throw these under the broiler watch them close they only took four minutes under there and there you go looks like the thumbnail to me anything like this will be crispier if you cool it on a rack so steam can escape those edges would be burnt black if we had not done the water trick any sauce could work here i'm just using my standard sauce which is this brand of very strongly flavored ground tomatoes a little olive oil spices maybe a pinch of sugar that's it any mozzarella is fine but i'm using my very favorite pizza cheese which is this brand of whole milk low moisture string cheese it's a pain to unwrap and chop up if you're gonna make a bunch of big pizzas but it's actually perfect for making little french bread pizzas because you only need like two sticks worth for this and the rest stays vacuum sealed it's convenient nice and crispy shiny bottom on those and because we press them flat they have that satisfyingly dense panini bite they're easier to fit in your mouth and frankly the experience is just much more pizza like than eating a big thick loaf okay let's do one more where we get creative a couple of garlic cloves and orange zest it might sound weird but orange and tomato is my new favorite flavor combination save that orange we'll use it then some parsley i'm making gremolata which is my new favorite pizza topping it's usually made with lemon zest but i'm loving it with orange you just chop it into itself and the flavors really do seem to merge set that aside i'll peel and roughly chop a shallot and check out this new sauce that i've been playing with olive oil in a pretty hot pan saute the shallots until they're just starting to brown and then in go a few high quality whole canned plum tomatoes i'll mash those up a little bit to get them going but we're going to puree this later so don't stress about it my heat is like medium high i'll just stir these until they get some color the pan starts to go dry before that stuff on the bottom burns deglaze with the juice of that orange i'm just using my hand to catch any seeds all the juice from that orange get everything deglazed and that's it and it goes to a narrow vessel followed by a couple more of the nearly raw tomatoes straight from the can the sauce would taste too cooked without them and hit these with the stick until smooth tomato and orange i swear it's awesome it's just a little sweet so balance that with some chili nice and let's do a bigger pizza this time a real big loaf here and it can be stale this is stale that's as big a bread boat as will fit in my biggest pan my 12 incher but first big chunks of pancetta or any bacon-like product cold pan turn the heat on medium and let that fat slowly render as the heat comes in stir a bit and you don't want to take them any farther than this at this stage otherwise they'll have the texture of bacon bits by the time the pizza is done i'm just pulling out most of them while trying to leave any fat behind arrange the remaining meat and roughly the shape of the bread i think i need some more fat so a little olive oil and then in goes the bread cut side down and this time i'll smash it flat with another pan that works you just gotta lean into it with your body weight just takes a couple of minutes and you can smell when it's about ready to flip that bread stuck a little bit no problem spatula got it off and yeah now we've got browned pancetta chunks embedded into our bread it's a good day to be alive just a little more olive oil to fry the bottom turn the heat off i'll dust with a little garlic powder i meant to do that on the last one too on goes that sauce a little parm from the can just tastes right on pizza to me the stuff from the can carefully place that cheese you don't want too much of it to roll off onto the pan it'll burn and smell finally the remaining pancetta in and amongst the cheese can't forget to brush the exposed cut sides with water sometimes i start these on the middle rack under the broiler and then maybe move them to the top depending on how they're looking again it was just maybe five minutes and here we are hot with three t's sprinkle that with some gremolata and let it cool on the rack i love the flaky crispy bottom that you get from using the top of the bread loaf chop that up and come on how are you gonna be snobby about that that is good food i don't care if it's descended from a frozen dinner that they gave us at park forest elementary on fridays in 1989 that is good pizza

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 490,438

Rating: 4.9472623 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Ej62TV6M52M

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/WinstonBites]

I will say for clueless people like me, new to cooking, I find even these simple ones helpful and interesting

[u/Lornemalver]

getting mad at adam for making a video about french bread pizza is galaxy brain

[u/OrangeTuba]

Alternative title "Why I water my bread"

[u/Chris-Fallz]

This is really good with English muffins and on Italian bread

[u/The-Bigger-Fish]

Tomato-Orange sauce. Sounds interesting and I can;t say I've ever heard of that combo before. Might give it a shot if I ever have the chance.