Taking the idea of pizza being a sort of finger food even farther than normal, we put together a version that's half bread and half pizza, and can be pulled apart by hand for individual servings.
To start off with, we've made our traditional crust, topped it with our homemade tomato sauce, and then layered on mozzarella and pepperoni. Normally this would be the end of the recipe, but for pizza bread it's just the beginning!
We've made this a few different ways now, and here's another version using different cheeses. You could easily swap out your preferred cheese or even use a different meat, but make sure it's sliced thinly. Salami or turkey would be great, but something larger like chunks of chicken or sausage crumbles could be problematic in the later stages of putting together this recipe.
We're going to start slicing up our pizza - BEFORE it's baked. Start in the middle and begin slicing long, thin strips.
As you cut each strip, pick up the piece and set it down on the next one, so that you you will be stacking each slice on top of the previous one.
Continue slicing and stacking the pizza...
...until it's all one teetering tower of cheese and sauce! But we're not done - starting in the middle again, we're going to begin slicing the opposite direction to turn that tower into smaller slices.
Eventually you'll get to this point, where you have five or six slices of the already-sliced pizza.
Pick up each slice (be careful to hold top and bottom so it doesn't fall apart!) and place it in a bread loaf pan. Press it firmly against the edge so there's room for everything to fit.
Continue stacking each slice into the pan until it's completely full from one edge to the other...
...just like this!
Or this!
Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes or so until it's baked through and then allow to cool. Each slice will easily pull apart from the others just using your fingers, so everyone can serve up as many pieces as they want for themselves. Be sure to save some extra tomato sauce to use for dipping!
How did the pizza crust turn out? When I do pizza I just have it in one layer, oven as hot as it can get and I put it on a pizza stone. I find that best for getting the pizza crust just right. I would have thought that turning it into something of a log and having no direct heat to the crust in the middle, the crust in the middle would be under-cooked. I think it's a great idea to pre-cut the pizza before you cook it, that would make it more "pull apart", even if you cooked it as a pizza would normally be cooked. It's interesting that the cheese would be the "sticking point" to this theory, originally pizzas didn't have cheese on them, that's a western world idea.
ReplyDeleteThe top of the crust is more crispy and the rest is much softer, but so far it's turned out great and hasn't felt undercooked. Somehow every time we've made this we forgot to get a picture of the finished product!
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