French bread pizzas are easy to make. The commercial ones are made with French bread that is baked in a clam shell type of pan, which allows the bread to have a flat top and bottom portion, so when the bread is split, there is a flat bottom to each half. You probably won’t have access to this luxury, so regular french bread or rolls will work just fine. To prevent the sauce from soaking into the crumb portion, brush the crumb with melted butter or margarine. Flavor it with garlic, or a little powdered Parmesan or Romano cheese, or Italian herbs. Then apply the sauce, cheese, and dress it to the order. We normally use a small piece of wadded-up foil to form a saddle to hold the French bread upright in the oven. Besure to place the bread on a screen or tray to keep it up off of the deck if using a deck oven as the bottom will burn before the top is finished. If you use an air impingement oven, you may find that the bake is excessive if you bake these are the same time and temperature as your regular pizzas, if this is the case, if you have a split conveyor, you can reset the time for a shorter bake on one conveyor, or you can use the old center door trick (half pass), or, you might look at placing the pizza into a pan as this will help to reduce a portion of the bottom bake, and if all else fails, try placing the pizza onto a sheet of foil, then folding the sides up to help protect the French bread portion from the high velocity air. It is not terribly difficult, you just have to find what works best in your oven. Of cours all of this isn’t important at all if you have a deck, or oven that you can dediacte to baking your French bread pizzas, which really isn’t much more than an open face, oven baked sandwich.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
