French Bread Pizza with Homemade Pizza Sauce

This is a fun switch up for pizza night - French bread pizza. I love the crispiness of the toasted bread with the gooey cheese and toppings. It is a great fast dinner that my family loved. This recipe uses 2 loaves of store bakery French bread, but you could also use homemade French or Italian bread and it would be wonderful. I also love the homemade pizza sauce included in this recipe - it's made in a blender so it's super fast. It has great flavor and is just the right thickness for a pizza sauce. The recipe is from Jamie Cooks It Up.

French Bread Pizza

2 loaves store bakery French bread
pizza sauce (recipe below)
shredded mozzarella cheese
grated Parmesan
toppings of choice: pepperoni, cooked & crumbled sausage, green peppers, olives, red onion, mushrooms, etc.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Slice French bread loaves in half through the center. Place on foil lined sheet pans. Spoon prepared pizza sauce over halved loaves, then top with shredded mozzarella and other toppings of choice ending with a good sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese. Bake for about 7 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and edges of bread are golden. Let pizzas rest a couple minutes then cut into slices (a pizza cutter works the best here).

Homemade Pizza Sauce

1, 14 oz can Italian stewed tomatoes
1, 6 oz can tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
pinch red pepper flakes

Combine ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth and well combined. I used the "smoothie" setting on my blender and it worked great.