When your favorite sports bar is known for its pizza, how do you reinvent those fantastic flavors into something new? If your weeknight hangout is looking for ideas to expand the menu, introduce them to a fabulous pasta dish that revolutionizes pizza without sacrificing that bar-food feel. Here's a pizza pasta concept that you can serve in a bread bowl or even in a carved sub roll for a portable yet hearty meal.

It Starts With a Flavorful Sauce

When you're infusing pizza flavors into a pasta dish, you need to start with a flavorful, rich sauce that just says "pizza." Making the sauce from scratch is simple in a commercial kitchen - even in a small bar.

Put a quarter of a cup of olive oil into a medium-sized skillet. Heat it over medium-high heat until you see a shimmer on the surface. Oil glistens like that when it is hot. Toss in a finely minced shallot and three or four sliced cloves of garlic. Let them cook over medium heat until you see the shallots start to brown and everything softens. This takes five to ten minutes.

Add a quarter of a cup of finely shredded fresh carrot and a tablespoon or so of fresh chopped thyme. Allow that to heat through for another five minutes. Pour in two 28-ounce cans of peeled tomatoes and crush them lightly with a masher. Stir in a couple of tablespoons of honey and add a bay leaf. Let everything simmer for about 30 minutes before you season it with salt and pepper to taste.

Toppings Enhance The Flavors

Brown a half-pound of any meat of your choice along with about half of a sweet onion that's been diced. You'll also want some green pepper slices and a package of pepperoni. To finish it all off, slice up two cups of fresh mozzarella cheese.

Creating The Final Dish

Boil a pound of rotini, shells or penne pasta. Reserve a bit of the cooking liquid. Mix all of the pasta with the sauce and all of the toppings except for the cheese. Add a bit of cooking liquid if it's too dry. Divide the mixture into bread bowls or sliced bread rolls to order. Top them with sliced cheese and put them under the salamander for a couple of minutes, until the cheese is bubbly and the bread is warm.

Serve it with an extra side of sauce if you're offering table service or a light drizzle of sauce atop the sub rolls. If you're looking for a sports bar in your area, visit Atlas Pizza & Sports Bar.