Here's how me and my dad have been making pepperoni bread for almost 20 years
What you need
Go to your local pizzeria and get a pizza dough. Keep it cold until your ready to use it, you don't want it to rise
About 1/4 pound of pepperoni, or more if you want
Mozzarella cheese! Honestly I don't have exact measurements for this but I guess anywhere between 1/2 and 3/4 pound of shredded mozzarella. Maybe a bound if it's a big bread or If you REALLY like cheese.
Parchment paper
Something to roll the dough with. You can use a rolling pin, or a full wine bottle. If you use a large bottle it should be full, the extra weight makes rolling easier
And a cookie sheet/ baking tray
Preheat the oven to 475⁰F (246⁰c).
Take out your pepperoni and cheese, and put them to the side.
Lay down a large piece of parchment paper. Take your dough out of the fridge and put it on the parchment. Take a second piece of parchment the same size as the first and put it on top of the dough
Take your roller and make your dough into a rectangle about the same size as your cookie sheet
Once you get it to size you need to work sort of fast because your dough really wants to shrivel up
Now you start laying down the pepperoni. You want them to overlap a little. Fill most of the area but leave room on the sides and top for sealing the loaf.
Now cover the pepperoni with the mozzarella cheese. You still want to leave the space on the sides and top though.
Now use the parchment to start folding the dough. Start from the bottom and fold up. The first fold is about 1/3 of the dough
Pinch the edges closed and make sure the seam is sealed. It should look similar to the image below.
Put the dough on the baking tray with the seam side down. When put diagonally it should reach accross the tray. (Mine is a little short but you get the point)
Bake at 475⁰ for 12-15 minutes, turn the tray around when it's almost done to bake evenly. It's ready when it's golden in color.
(Mine is a little over baked because my dog was distracting me, but it's still good)
Wait a few minutes for the bread to cool a bit before cutting so the cheese dosnt melt out
(Sorry for the shitty picture, I didn’t have another one haha...)
“Base” recipe
1 Tbsp active dry yeast
3 cups warm but not hot water
1 Tbsp (approx) sugar or honey
6+ cups flour (I use AP because I’m too lazy to go for the bread flours)
1 tsp salt
Fresh chopped oregano
Garlic powder (and/or some diced fresh garlic)
Filling
More fresh chopped oregano
Fresh sliced basil, chiffonade
Sun-dried tomatoes
Mozzarella (deli slices or shredded...I prefer the deli slices)
Sliced pepperoni
Topping
More fresh chopped oregano
Melted butter
Rosemary (fresh or dried, doesn’t much matter)
Garlic powder (and/or diced fresh garlic)
Mix water (3 cups), sweetener (~1 Tbsp sugar or honey), and yeast (1 Tbsp active dry) together in large bowl. Set aside to proof until foaming, ~5 minutes.
Prepare flour mix of choice (GF mix or just AP flour, 6 cups). Gradually add to yeast mixture and mix until incorporated.
Mix with hands and knead until the ball is smooth - it doesn’t stick to your hand or anything else. Add more flour as needed to get it to this point - if it becomes too dry, very slowly add water 1 Tbsp at a time, continuing to knead.
Put in oiled bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place for ~2 hours.
While waiting for dough to rise, prepare:
Melt butter with oregano, rosemary, and garlic. Set aside in separate bowl.
Chiffonade basil and set aside in separate bowl
Chop fresh oregano and set aside in separate bowl
Chop sun-dried tomatoes. (The ones I had were large and I didn’t want people eating the bread to have to gnaw through them so I cut them into little chunks.)
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (232 degrees C I guess) and place either a cast-iron skillet or an old cookie sheet to preheat with the oven. The original recipe also suggested a pizza stone but I’m not sure how that would work.
Punch down dough and pour out on large, floured surface. Flatten using a rolling pin or your hands. Keep in mind that this will be rolled over itself as well as other ingredients.
Begin composing your layers. Here’s what I did:
Brush a thin layer of the melted butter and herbs.
Sun-dried tomatoes
Basil
Oregano
Pepperoni
Mozzarella
Carefully fold over and begin to roll. Ideally you only want to make one or two revolutions - make the rolls too thick and it will be harder to cook the middle without burning the rest to high hell.
Somehow move the log to a cookie tray - I like to cover mine with parchment paper or aluminum foil but it’s not necessary.
Brush the top with the herb butter and sprinkle with more oregano, garlic powder, whatever.
When the oven is ready, pour 1 cup of water into cast-iron skillet or cookie sheet.
Slide bread into the oven and bake for 30 minutes.
Check on the bread. You may need to cover with foil to keep the top from burning.
Depending on how thick it is, it may need to bake for longer.
Notes:
This can be damaging to your cast-iron skillet so I don’t recommend using it. I use my cast-iron because it’s rusted to high hell and would take a lot of work I haven’t gotten around to putting in to clean the dang thing.
I have also used a cookie tray which is why I suggested it. It doesn’t work as well, but it did well enough
The lovely thing about this recipe is that there are no eggs so under cooking it isn’t the end of the world. Depending on when I’m serving the bread or how long it will be traveling, I sometimes deliberately under cook it so that when it gets to its destination, it can be tossed in the oven to warm and finish cooking.
The alternative to an enormous log: pepperoni bread bites. They come out as small to medium-sized dinner rolls. Much more easier to manage and fun to do with friends and family (I don’t have friends or family so I make a log.)
Take a small handful of dough, smush it flat between your hands, stack your layers, and fold over the edges to make dumpling shapes.
Gently roll between your hands to form a more uniform shape.
My goal when I was designing this recipe was to emulate pizza as much as possible. Now...I like a lot of sauce on my pizza. I love marinara sauce. I have been called a freak for how much sauce I like on my pizza and I am okay with that.
Thing is, making this bread, you don’t want to introduce too much liquid, which can lead to sad, soggy bread or bread that just won’t cook in the middle. That is why I went for the sun-dried tomatoes. I live near this magical place called Produce Junction where I can get a huge bag of it for like...$2. It’s amazing. I could also get a huge bag of oregano for the same price which is why there is so much goddamn oregano in this.
Anyway, the idea was to make pizza without drowning it in sauce. Tragic for me and freaks like me that love a lot of sauce with their pizza, but better in the end for the overall product. So, sun-dried tomatoes that aren’t canned and soaked in oil or other shenanigans, lots of oregano, and lots of basil.
The garlic and rosemary are to emulate garlic bread - like eating pizza and garlic knots all in one. (I also had a lot of rosemary leftover that day from another bread I made so I dumped it in here.)
Preheat oven to 375. Grease two pans. Cut dough into three balls and roll flat across board. Top one with pepperoni and parmesan and roll into a cigar. Top second with ham, Salami, pepperoni, and parmesan and roll into a cigar. Top third with tomato sauce parmesan and mozzarella and roll into a cigar. Bake all three in oven for 20 min.
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