French bread pizza is an all time classic, quick and delicious recipe and this modern french bread pizza recipe is even better. We took the classic french bread pizza and gave it a proper Italian upgrade.
We start with good quality bread that is toasted up first and then we switched around the order of ingredients placed on the bread to keep the french bread pizza from getting soggy.
The final result is amazing and I promise you will forget about those french bread pizzas of your past once you try this. This is like a cross between my tomato rubbed crostini and French bread pizza. So good!
This french bread pizza is all about quality ingredients. Since there are so few them, every ingredients counts.
Fresh mozzarella instead of shredded makes this so amazing. 
Good quality bread is important!
Now you can get away with making this with what you have in your house but if you can go out and find great quality bread and cheese (even marinara sauce that is great quality and already made) then the final result will be that much better.
To speed things up a bit for this recipe, you do not have to make a sauce from scratch. You can buy some amazing sauces at the store these days so that is a great fast option. I have included a relatively quick marinara sauce recipe if you want to go that route.
As I mentioned above, in addition to finding amazing ingredients for this recipe, we improved the experience of the French bread pizza by switching around the order of ingredients on the bread.
Here are the basic instructions to make this delicious pizza bread:
- Make your marinara sauce (if you are not using store bought).
- Brush your sliced bread with olive oil.
- Toast up the bread either on a grill pan or under a broiler to crisp it up.
- When the bread is nice a crisped up, rub a fresh clove of garlic over the tops.
- Add your sliced fresh mozzarella on top of the bread.
- Place under the broiler until the cheese is bubbly and melted.
- Add a heaping spoonful of your marinara sauce on top of the cheese.
- Serve immediately.
This simple and modern version of homemade french bread pizza is seriously going to change your world. It is so good that I will entertain with these little pizza breads. I even will plan this for dinner when I want lighter food that is easy but still delicious.
If you want to entertain with them, all you need to do is add sauce to some of the crisped up cheese breads and the rest of them leave without sauce so that guests can add the sauce once they have eaten all of the prepared ones.
Here is what that looks like below.
Cooking up your French Bread Pizza:
This homemade french bread pizza cooks up quickly since we are using the broiler to melt the cheese, not the oven. The only time you will need to spend cooking this is crisping up the bread before you add the ingredients and after. In total, about 5 minutes.
If you are a person who loves taking your pizza and dipping it into more sauce you are really going to love this homemade pizza bread recipe.
How to Keep French Bread Pizza from Getting Soggy:
The old style way of making french bread pizza adds the sauce to directly to the bread which not only makes it mushy but I always felt like it was not enough. With this modern french bread pizza recipe, you get a nice amount of sauce on top of the pizza bread and you can add as much as you like if you feel that is not enough.
I love improving on recipes and this modern french bread pizza (Italian pizza bread really) is better than the original.
I hope you give this one a try and see why we are obsessed with this recipe in our house.
Modern French Bread Pizza
Ingredients
Sauce
- 2 cloves of garlic minced
- ⅛ teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
- ½ small yellow onion spanish finely chopped
- 1 28 oz can of whole San Marzano tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon of butter
- 3 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil best quality you can find
- 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper and more to taste
- ½ tablespoon fresh chopped basil
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
Pizzas
- 8 ounces fresh mozzarella sliced thin
- 1 loaf of good quality Italian bread sliced
- 4 tablespoon good quality extra virgin olive oil
- 1 clove of garlic
Instructions
Sauce Instructions (If you are making your sauce from scratch)
- In a large saute pan over medium heat, add your olive oil, red pepper flakes, onions and garlic and cook for about 4-5 minutes or until the onions begin to soften.
- Now add your canned whole tomatoes and with a potato masher or with a large spoon, begin gently pressing down on the whole tomatoes so they begin to break apart. Be careful because the juices will shoot out of the tomatoes when you do this so proceed slowly!
- Next, add fresh basil, kosher salt and dried oregano and stir well.
- Cover with a tight fitting lid and turn down heat down to low and allow to gently simmer for 15 minutes.
- Taste for seasoning and see if it needs any salt.
Modern Pizza bread
- Pre-heat your broiler to high
- Place your sliced bread on to a large cookie sheet or sheet pan.
- Drizzle your bread with olive oil on both sides.
- Place under the broiler until the bread starts to brown about 2 minutes.
- Remove the pan from the oven and flip the bread over and place back into the oven to crisp up the other side, another 2 minutes.
- Now remove the bread from the oven and rub the top of the bread with your clove of garlic.
- Set aside.
- Slice up your mozzarella thin.
- Add 2 slices to your bread.
- Place back under the broiler for a couple minutes until the cheese begins to melt. Keep a close eye on it so you bread does not burn.
- Remove from the oven and place your cheese bread on to a large plate or cutting board.
To Serve
- Add a heaping tablespoon of your marinara sauce on top of the cheese and bread.
- Ladle more marinara sauce into a medium bowl and serve the Modern pizza bread with the extra sauce on the side.
- Enjoy!
Dan says
This was really amazing and so simple. We used store bought sauce to make it easy and it came out great!