80’s kitchen classics volume 2

This classic dish has gone down in folklore, and is a perfect snack or lunch. It’s been the favourite of students everywhere for many, many years. Now it’s your time to re-live this dish, and I know you’re going to love it all over again...

French bread pizza!

So many memories, so many versions and so much cheese! I remember going crazy for this as a kid, and not those frozen ones (yuk!), real homemade ones like mama used to make.

Please nobody say “glorified cheese on toast”, this is so much more. It may sound easy but people do make mistakes making this, now I’m going to show you how to do it right and take it to another level. Ingredients

• French bread
• Cheddar cheese
• Passata
• Dried herb of your choice
• Salt
• Pepper
• A little drizzle of good olive oil

As the main ingredient of this is the bread the quality you buy will make a difference. The bread should be fresh, you can use those baguettes you finish in the oven yourself, if you do make sure it’s gone completely cold. Now mistake number one a lot of people make is using tomato puree. Don’t. It’s just to tart and strong. Simplest thing to do is make an easy pizza sauce, you can use this on your regular pizza bases too. Add the passata to a pan, how much is up to you depending on how many pizzas you’re doing, bear in mind we are going to cook this down slowly to approximately 2/3 its original amount. At the same time you add the passata, put in a pinch of salt and pepper and good pinch of herbs. Basil or oregano are the obvious choices, but mixed herbs is how we did it back then. Slow cook on a low heat until it’s reduced as described above. Taste it. It should be a little tart with a BIG tomato flavour. Add seasoning to taste if required. Now drizzle that teaspoon or two of olive oil in, just to make it shine! Now slice your French bread into the size you want, and then press down gently on the open face. Some people pull out some of the bread from the middle, but I don’t subscribe to this.

If you spread sauce on the bread at this point you will end up with a soggy pizza…not good. So pop the bread face up under the grill for a minute or so, all we are doing here is drying out the surface a little. We don’t want any colour on the bread so watch it and feel it now and again. Is the bread still white but going crisp? Then it’s done! Now build your pizza, putting a layer of our sauce down first. For me it’s a must to have Cheddar, but of course you can use other cheeses. I added some chopped onions and mushrooms to make it a more substantial lunch. Feel free to add what you want, think pizza delivery menu and don’t think you have to stick to “classic” pizza combinations.

Just remember this isn’t exactly an Italian dish ;)

Place directly onto the shelf (put a drip tray under them to catch any stray cheese!) at the top of a hot oven (about 200C) until golden and bubbling. It will take about 10 minutes depending on how many lovely toppings you’ve stuffed on top. There you have it, classic French bread pizza and as you can see I served mine with crinkle-cut chips …I hope this brings back as many memories for you as it does for me! If you try this recipe please tell me how it went, and what toppings you used!