Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Mini Pizza Bites

One thing The Other Adult and The Kid never tire of is pizza. I have different recipes for different occasions. These mini pizza bites make a fun appetizer or a perfectly cute and interesting main course.

Mini Pizzas

Preheat the oven to 475.

Thin Crust Pizza Dough, originally from Cook's Illustrated, but modified for my purposes
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp yeast
  • 1/2 teaspoon honey
  • 1/2 teaspoon table salt
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
Combine ingredients in food processor and set aside while preparing toppings.

Pizza Sauce
  • 1 16oz can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon thyme
  • 1 tablespoon garlic Paste
  • Salt to taste
Ok, this is going to drive some people crazy, but I don't measure these ingredients at all. I dump the tomatoes in a sauce pan and add dried basil, oregano, thyme, garlic paste and salt. I heat and taste, and keep tasting as it heats. I find that the garlic is important, but the other herbs vary depending on what I'm in the mood for and what I have on hand. The measurements I provided above are a guess. I also sometimes add a little olive oil or veggie broth if the sauce is a little too thick. If the sauce is too thin, it should cook for longer. I usually make more than I need, and keep some in the fridge.

Pizza Toppings:
Grated Cheese (your choice--cheddar, mozzarella, fontina, harvati, meunster, etc)
Small sliced vegetables (again, your choice)

While the sauce is cooking and the dough is rising, cut small toppings for each pizza. I find that the mini pizzas require proportionally fewer toppings than a regular 14" pizza, so I make little piles of each different type of topping. The toppings I enjoy most are peppers, onions and mushrooms, and vegetarian sausage. For the sausage, I usually use Morning Star Farms vegetarian sausage patties, heated slightly and then cut into crumbles.







The Other Adult and I usually assemble these pizzas together. We start an assembly line, first making little 2-inch dough rounds on the pizza pans (this probably yields around 24-30 mini pizzas), then spreading a dollop of pizza sauce on each mini crust, then adding toppings, and finally adding cheese.

Part of the fun with this recipe is the resulting combinations of toppings. If I've prepared four different toppings, not all the toppings will fit on all the pizzas, so each mini pizza will have a different combination of the pizza toppings I've prepared.

These bake on the pizza pans for about 10 minutes. This same recipe can be used to prepare one 14" pizza. The only difference for a 14" pizza is that it's baked at 500 for about 10-12 minutes.

If I'm serving these for company, sometimes I'll get more creative with my toppipngs. Goat cheese, basil and tomatoes make a nice combination.



6 comments:

  1. These pizza bites look delicious. I liked the idea of adding honey to the dough.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! The honey makes less of a difference in this recipe than in another pizza dough recipe I have. My thick crust pizza dough crust is almost a little sweet--it's a pure delight. I'll share it sometime!

    ReplyDelete
  3. These are ridiculously cute. We have homemade pizza all the time but I've never thought to do minis. My kids would love it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My kid loves it too!! And the minis are a little less messy than regular pizza because they're bite-sized. It's a little more labor intensive than regular pizza (making 20 or 30 little pizzas is more work than one big pizza), but lately my family can't get enough of it. And, when the Other Adult or the Kid helps me put them together, it takes less time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. These look delicious! So much cuter than big pizzas. I'll have to make them soon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Cool! Let me know how they turn out!

    ReplyDelete