French Bread White Pizza Recipe

Homemade pizza is great, but it's not the easiest thing to make. As recipe developer Michelle McGlinn admits, "Making your own dough takes time, and thawing and proofing frozen dough can be a pain." With french bread pizza, however, there's no need to bother with all of that. McGlinn calls this particular recipe "a fun take on a classic freezer meal," although unlike the kind made famous (and possibly developed) by Stouffer's, hers has no red sauce nor mozzarella cheese. Instead, it's a white pizza with a Parmesan cream sauce topped with a contemporary combination of onions, prosciutto, and arugula.

McGlinn does say, though, that "you can customize it as much as you want," so obviously you can change up the toppings to suit your own preferences if you don't care for meat, onions, and/or greenery on your pizza. Other toppings McGlinn suggests include sausage, pepperoni, and peppers as well as the ever-trendy hot honey. She says you can use red sauce in place of white, as well, or even swap out the bread. As she tells us, "Italian bread works great, as well as sourdough loaves, ciabatta, or even baguettes ... any loaf-type bread will do."

To make the white sauce, you'll be using butter, flour, milk, Parmesan, garlic, salt, and pepper. For the pizza crust you'll need a loaf of french bread and for the toppings you should pick up some prosciutto, a red onion, and some arugula. (With the leftover arugula and onion, you could always make a salad to accompany the pizza.)

Preheat the oven to 450 F, then melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour to make a roux. When you have a smooth paste, stir in the milk slowly so the sauce doesn't get lumpy. Cook it for about a minute until it thickens up a bit, then add the Parmesan, garlic, salt, and pepper. Keep cooking the sauce for another minute so it thickens up even more, then turn the heat off once it's nice and creamy.

If you don't want to bother making a white sauce, McGlinn says you can skip this step and just sprinkle the bread with Parmesan, mozzarella, cheddar, or a combination of these before you bake it. She does mention, though, that "the sauce is great for keeping things moist and adding a nice garlic flavor."

Slice the loaf of bread in half, then slice each half through the middle. Once you're done with the slicing, you should have four open-face pizza planks. Put them on a baking sheet, then spread ¼ of the sauce over the cut side of each slice. Top the sauce with the prosciutto and onion.

Cook the pizzas for about 10 to 12 minutes. When they're done, the sauce should be bubbling, the onions should be soft, and the prosciutto should be crisp. McGlinn cautions, "Don't leave it in the oven for too long or the bread will dry out or char."

Once the pizzas come out of the oven, top each one with ¼ of the arugula, then cut them into slices. McGlinn notes that you can also slice the bread very thinly to make white pizza crostinis, something that will help stretch it out to feed more people as an appetizer. She says that when the pizza is put to this purpose, "People can grab pieces easily and both prep and cleanup are mindless."