Tony Gemignani, pizza master and restaurateur

Like many of us I grew up eating French bread pizzas. As a kid you would typically have two options, have your mom make you one or buy store bought. Stouffer’s was a popular frozen brand that was sold nationwide. If I recall they had thick cut pepperoni triangles. Over the years especially when I was a bachelor, I would make them for myself and my roommates. Now having a sourdough bread bakery, I was going to sell them. I had the perfect sourdough baguette. I lathered it with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and thick cut pepperoni.  It baked in 5 minutes and it came out beautiful. I took one bite into this masterpiece, and it didn’t taste right. I said to myself is the sauce bad? What went wrong? The flavor of the tomatoes and the baguette had a very acidic sour flavor to it, it wasn’t good. It took me a couple of hours or so and I figured it out. It was the wrong bread.

Remember it’s called French bread pizza and I was using a sourdough baguette. The French traditionally do not like the sour in sourdough bread, they prefer a slightly sweet baguette. If you ever made a super sour dough pizza with tomato sauce on it, the taste can be as if the sauce turned sour. This doesn’t always happen with pizza, but it sometimes can. Balance is the key to making food great. My baguette is super sour, which really didn’t give me that nostalgic flavor profile I was looking for. I took it off the menu and if I were to do this again, which I did, I would choose a French bread baguette.  When I did, it was absolutely amazing and like before it was super crunchy. It took me back to when I was a kid; it was a beautiful day. I also called my mom and asked just to make sure, and she confirmed that she always used French bread when we were kids. Mom always knows.

These can be sold freshly baked, take ‘n’ bake, or frozen.