Making Homemade Pizza Bites

Working at a pizza shop, I am always looking for new tasty treats to make. One day when I was making dough I was left with a couple small dough balls and I thought, hmm why not make a mini pizza. With the image of bagel bites in my head, I started with a lil sauce, some cheese, some toppings then Bamm, Pizza bites were born. And they were delicious.

One of the best parts of the Pizza Bites is how little materials you need to make them. You could make 40+ with the amount of toppings you would use on a medium sized pizza! Although each batch will vary based off what kind of toppings you put on and how many you make, here are some sample materials that I used on my Pizza Bites:

• Mozzarella Cheese
• Pepperoni
• Italian Sausage
• Canadian Bacon
• Chicken
• Onions
• Pizza Dough
• Red Sauce
• Alfredo Sauce
• BBQ sauce

Making your own pizza dough can be a little strenuous so I recommend stopping by your local pizza shop and asking for a dough ball and chances are they will have some for you. They shouldn't be too expensive either.

After getting your dough ball, start by ripping the larger dough ball into several smaller balls, each one being no wider then a quarter. Then I recommend rolling the smaller dough balls around in some flower, just to make them a lil easier to work with. For further imagery, check out quick time video

After you have pressed out as many of the smaller dough balls as you like, start adding sauce. Using a spoon, dab small amounts of Red sauce onto the center of the skins. I personally don't like too much sauce so I use as little as possible so it's not overwhelming. If you're feeling risky, try some other sauces like Alfredo sauce or BBQ sauce to make some more interesting combos.

As far as toppings go, you can put on basically anything you could imagine, but I decided to keep it classy with some regular italian pizza toppings. Start with just a pinch of Mozzarella cheese on each pizza bite.

Since the pizzas themselves are about the size of a regular pepperoni or smaller, it doesn't make much sense to just throw a whole one on. So as you can see in the video demonstration, you just rip the Pepperoni itself up. You will have to do the same with the rest of the toppings as well but have fun trying different combinations, my favorites are pepperoni, italian sausage and canadian bacon on red sauce or chicken and onions on BBQ sauce.

After all toppings are on I like to add some spices, I used our pizza shops secret shimmy's but in truth it's just some basil and other generic spices so try whatever smells good.

After all toppings are on and you throw some spices on, place the pizza bites on some parchment paper and a cooking tray then pop them in the oven. At the Pizza shop we heat our ovens to around 550 Degrees F. at which the pizza bites only take about 4 or so minutes to cook. To ensure that they cook evenly it never hurts to give them a quick 180 degree spin, about 2 minutes into the cooking process. I have never cooked them in a regular oven at home, but I would say it'd be best to cook them for 7-9 minutes at around 425 Degrees.

Once the Pizza bites start getting a little brown its safe to say they are ready to eat, pull those suckers out of the oven, BE SURE NOT TO TOUCH THE COOKING SHEET, give them a minute to cool off, then enjoy!!