Cheesy Pepperoni Pizza Bread

One of our new goals for 2013 is to budget, save more money, etc.  We would love to get our mortgage payed off a few years early!  One way we plan on doing this is to eat out less, and lets face it, that resolution mainly falls on my shoulders.  I'm going to try to watch sales, use coupons, and most importantly, use the fridge, freezer, and pantry to meal plan.  I've been trying to mostly cook recipes that we have the majority of ingredients.  Sometime next week I am going to do a huge inventory of the protein in our fridge and use as much as possible during the month of February.  I've started trying to buy most of our meat on clearance and stick in straight in the freezer.  We've already started saving a lot this way, but I forget what all we have.

As you all know, I love to cook.  I love looking through cookbooks, websites, watching Food Network, and of course Pinterest.  It's hard for me to see a recipe and not want to go out and buy all the ingredients to make for it.  But I'm working on it...

So, one of the cookbooks I got for Christmas is from blogger Jenny Flake.  She runs a lovely recipe blog called Picky Palate.  I marked about 20 recipes I can't wait to try in here.  This will be the first!  Luckily I had everything to make this.  I made a cake with buttermilk for Michael's birthday and have been looking for recipes to finish it up with.  I also have pepperoni I needed to use so this recipe fits in perfect with our new goal! 

The case:

Cheesy Pepperoni Pizza Bread from Picky Palate

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 
• 2 large eggs 
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 
• 3/4 cup buttermilk 
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese 
• 1 1/2 cups shredded Mozzarella cheese 
• 1 cup quartered pepperoni slices, about 32 slices 
• 1/2 cup marinara sauce 
• 1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning 
• 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and spray small bread pan with non-stick cooking spray. 
2. Place flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and pepper into the bowl of a stand or electric mixer, mix to combine. Slowly add in eggs, oil, buttermilk, Parmesan, Mozzarella and pepperoni until just combined. 
3. Pour half of batter into prepared bread pan that measures 9x5x2 3/4-inches. Top evenly with marinara sauce then pour remaining batter over sauce. Top with Italian seasoning and additional Parmesan cheese. 
4. Bake for 45-55 minutes or until toothpick comes clean from center. Let cool for 30 minutes before removing from pan. Slice and serve warm or room temperature.

The ruling:
The hardest thing about making this bread was waiting to eat it 30 minutes after it came out of the oven.  This was super yummy!  Great Italian flavors.  But I do wonder how you serve it.  Jenny has it listed on her blog as an appetizer but it's a little heavy for that.  I can see kids wanting to eat it as a mean.  I guess it's not that different than a piece of pizza!