Using up leftovers - French bread pizzas

Many, many moons ago Suze from Simply Seeking Serenity commented on a post I did about food waste, asking if I would post some of the things I do with leftovers.  I don't think I ever did get around to doing a proper post on that but in a new effort to also make sure to cook and use up everything, I've decided to post  details every time I do this for the next while.  

After eating leftover pasta salad from the barbeque on Friday all weekend, I still also needed to use up the baguette that I was left with.  A few things came together to give me a flash of inspiration on this one and French bread pizzas it was.

I sliced the baguette in half and then again into lengths a bit longer than my hand.  I opened a jar of passata that I made last summer, feeling smug all the while about having lovely home-bottled summery goodness on hand.  My brother scored dozens of garlic bulbs in the reduced section of the supermarket a while back and when I was in Ireland a few weeks ago he gave me some.  I cut one large clove of garlic in half and rubbed the cut side all over the bread.  Then I spooned some passata onto each slice.  You can see in this photo, particularly the slice at the front, how quickly it gets absorbed as I had done half of them before I thought to go and get the camera and just in the time it took me to walk into the other room, a good bit had soaked into the bread.  So I added a second helping of passata to each slice.

Next up I finely sliced half an onion and added it to the top of half of them.  Then I took the grated cheese out of the fridge.  I bought a large block of cheese several weeks ago and never got around to using it.  I checked it on Friday and had to cut a fair amount away to get rid of the mould that had started and the rest of it was not terribly nice in texture anymore.  I prefer my cheese more on the creamy rather than the crumbly side of things.  So, I decided to grate it all, thinking that I would make a quiche on Saturday.  Only I never actually went shopping so have no eggs and therefore didn't make quiche (the impetus to use up that cheese helped decide me on making these French bread pizzas in the first place).  I added plenty of cheese to each slice and topped a few of them with chopped dried tomatoes.  I've been buying these quite a lot recently and plan to use however many jars I get through by the time tomato season comes around to give me an indication of how many I should be drying myself to see me through the winter.  

And that was it.  I remembered to sprinkle some oregano on at the last minute and they went into a pre-heated oven at about 150 while I did the washing-up and hung up the washing, so about twenty-five minutes I think.  Could have been less but I wanted to get that stuff finished before I sat down again. Et voila. 

The finished product - delicious, if I do say so myself

I planned to only eat half but was hungrier than I realised and ended up eating four of these.  The other two will be for lunch tomorrow.