Ham and Pineapple French Bread Pizza

My family loves bread.  We are big carb lovers in this house! I originally found a recipe for Ham and Pineapple Pizza subs in Cooking Light.  This recipe was inspired by the one that I saw in my magazine.  The original recipe called for refrigerated crusty French bread dough.  I thought to myself, why don't I buy a loaf of French bread instead and cut out some cooking time.  We recently went through a brutal heat spell and I wanted the oven on as short of a time as possible.  However, when I went to the grocery store, they didn't have any French bread!!!  They were having a one-day sale on Italian bread and the worker at the bakery counter told me that they were only baking Italian bread.  I did score a warm, fresh-out of the oven loaf though from her.  Honestly, it was very difficult for me not to rip into that loaf and eat the bread right there.  While we are big pizza eaters in our house I don't think that the kids ever had "french" bread pizza before now.  Like I said, they love bread....and they loved this pizza!  This was a big hit and was super quick and easy to make. I may have to try making some other versions of this type of pizza.

Ham and Pineapple "French" Bread Pizza
recipe inspired by Cooking Light, November 2011

Ingredients:
1 loaf Italian bread
1 cup tomato sauce
1 ham steak
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 can (8 oz) diced pineapple, drained

Directions:
1.Heat ham steak in small saute pan, cooking 2-3 minutes on each side to brown and heat through.  Once warmed, dice ham into small cubes.

2. Preheat broiler to high. 

3. Cut bread in half laying both sides open on foil-lined cookie sheet.  Spread tomato sauce evenly over both sides. Sprinkle ham, shredded mozzarella, and diced pineapple on top. 

4.  Broil approximately 3 minutes until toasty and browned.

Family Rating: 2 thumbs up.