Pepperoni Pizza Pull Apart Bread is made with layers of melting cheese, spicy pepperoni and a Dijon butter glaze. Great for parties, snacking or anytime!
This Pepperoni Pizza Pull Apart Bread is a cross between pizza and baked sliders. It has all of the crusty, cheesy, pepperoni goodness of pizza and the amazing garlicky, mustard-butter topping that soaks into slider buns while they are baking. Serve this up for the big Game Day, the Madness or really anytime. A single loaf has a counter top lifespan of about 7 minutes tops … so plan on making several!
Knowing that our family would be consuming too many of these over the next few months, I made a few tweaks to my original recipe to lighten the calorie and fat load. First, I replaced the butter with a margarine that has 80 calories per tablespoon. That’s a 20 calorie per tablespoon savings over the 100 calories per tablespoon of butter. And I kept rolling by replacing the whole milk mozzarella cheese for part-skim, which reduces each ounce of cheese by 15 calories. I did not tell my guys that I made any changes and they did not notice a difference. Yeah! They even said that they tasted better than before! Of course, you could go all veggie too!
I use an Italian bread loaf as the foundation for this pizza goodness. Sourdough and Vienna loaves will work just as well. Eyeball the cuts to be about 1.5 inches wide. Okay, if I’m being honest, I’m kind of a neat freak so I used a ruler to make sure all of my cuts were even. Please don’t judge.
The bread should look like this after you are finished cutting. I like to use my fingers to kind of spread apart the cuts before filling them. It’s a rough job but someone has to do it!
Just be careful not to spread them out too far…I did that the first time and tore the bread in two. Do you see the two bread loaves in the photo above…well one is a spare in case I screw up the first loaf. There goes that dang honesty again, get’s me every time.
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Pepperoni Pizza Pull Apart Bread
Ingredients
- 1 loaf Italian bread
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese plus more for dipping
- 1-1/2 cups mozzarella cheese
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- 2.5 ounces pepperoni sliced and quartered
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 2 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 cup pizza sauce for dipping optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F . Line a baking sheet with foil, large enough that when you pull up the sides you can wrap the bread loaf in the foil.
- Using a sharp bread knife, make deep, long slices thru the bread about 1-1/2 inches apart all across the bread, taking care not to cut thru to the bottom. Then make the same cuts going in the opposite direction. The cuts will look like a grid.
- In a small bowl, mix the cheese and garlic. Stuff the mixture into all of the bread cuts, leaving some cheese to poke out on the top. Stuff pepperoni pieces in all of the cuts.
- Place the butter in a microwave safe dish and microwave until the butter is just melted. Add the Dijon, Italian seasoning and garlic powder to the melted butter and stir to combine. Using a spoon, drizzle the butter mixture evenly over the bread and in between cuts.
- Wrap the loaf in the foil on the baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven.
- Remove the pan from the oven and open the foil packet to expose the bread. Turn the oven broiler on high and broil until the top of the bread is light brown and the cheese is bubbling. Serve hot.
Chef Tips
Nutrition Facts
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