French Bread Pizza with Sausage, Onions and Roasted Peppers

I've made french bread pizzas before and I love them . The bread adds a great dimension to the pizza, especially if it's good bread. 

So I made some more french bread! (See the original post here)

I think it was better this time around as I made it in the stand mixer. Much easier too. 

Anyway, I've usually made these pizzas by cutting the bread in to slices and topping each one. Like individual pizza bites. They are awesome that way, and I recommend trying it that way, but I wanted to do them this way today. 

The result was more ooey gooey than the "bites", almost bordering on Chicago deep dish pizza (which is, in my opinion, the best pizza (sorry, I love me some NY pizza, but I've never had a near religious experience with it. If you are in San Diego, get Berkeley Pizza and tell me NY is better.)) This is not exactly Chicago Pizza, but it is pretty good.

Obviously, you can make the pizza any way you feel like it, but I made mine this way tonight and I thought it was a great combination of ingredients.

French Bread Pizza with Sausage, Onions and Roasted Peppers

2, 13-15" loaves of French Bread

1-2 cups of pizza sauce or marinara sauce (mine was left over from this)

1 cup of mozzarella cheese, shredded

1/2 large onion

1 red (or orange) pepper

1 pound of Sweet Italian Sausage

3 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup or so of Ricotta cheese

Oregano to garnish

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You can start anywhere you want with this one as everything is going to be cooked on the pizza anyway. 

I began by roasting my pepper. I only had an orange one.

We've done this same technique many times before as illustrated by this post.

Just get it on the flame and roast until black all over.

Very Nice

 Remove the skin under running water.

Slice into strips.

Remove the casings of the sausages by slicing down the length of each link. I had two different kinds in the freezer.

Brown the sausage and remove with a slotted spoon. 

**Keep the fat in the pan for the onions.**

Slice the onion on a mandolin or by hand. I like the mandolin for this.

Pop the onion into the sausage fat and only cook it for about 1-2 minutes. We are only looking to remove the "raw" onion taste, not cook them totally.

Done:

Chop up your garlic and set aside.

Delicious home cooked bread

 Slice each baguette down the middle and then in half so that you have four pieces. 

I only used half of the second one.

Lay them out on a sheet pan lined with foil.

Add your sauce. I like a healthy amount. 

Add the cheese.

Lay on the sausage.

Add the onions and peppers.

Spoon on a few scoops of ricotta cheese. You can make this step even better if you mix the ricotta with some romano cheese. I was out, but I'll do it next time.

Cook at 425 for about 10 minutes or until the cheese melts. You want to pull it before the ricotta starts to brown too badly. I like a little color around the edges of the cheese. 

Serve with a shake of oregano.

Overall, the pizza was fantastic. Everything worked well together and the bread was soft and chewy. I loved the marinara in lieu of a standard pizza sauce as it allowed the other ingredients to stand out well. 

Again, you can make this with any toppings and it'll turn out well.

Enjoy!