These recipes using pizza dough twist, fold, roll and tie the versatile, yeasted dough into stromboli, breadsticks, snack-sized puffs and sweet treats.
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Traditional Pizza
Don’t let the idea of traditional pizza, meaning homemade pizza starting with a basic yeast-risen crust, make you think you can’t get creative. Experimenting with size, cooking methods and toppings unlocks countless possibilities. Divide pizza dough into smaller pieces for individual pizza crusts or experiment with cooking the crust on the grill. Basic pizza dough has no animal products, making it a versatile base for everything from vegan pizza to meat lovers.
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Pan Pizza
Pan pizza is essentially just what you think: pizza baked in a pan instead of freeform on a pizza stone or baking sheet. The process is similar whether you make a skillet pizza, a Dutch oven pizza or a sheet-pan pizza like this pepperoni pan pizza. Stretch the dough to fill the pan of your choice, and then add toppings. Depending on the recipe, it either gets cooked on the stovetop or transferred to a hot oven until browned, crisped and cooked through.
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Breadsticks
Shaping bits of pizza dough into long ropes and then letting them rise briefly before baking is an easy way to make soft, fluffy breadsticks. Brush them with melted butter or a flavored butter while warm, as with these garlic breadsticks, to add more flavor and a pretty sheen.
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Calzones and Pizza Pockets
Calzones and pizza pockets are like mini hand-held pizzas. The dough is folded over a filling, and the edges are sealed to create a half-moon shape. You can simply press the edges together, as with these pepperoni calzones, or crimp them decoratively, as with these pepperoni pizza pockets. Once sealed, brush the tops with beaten egg or milk, add the seasonings of your choice, and then bake until golden on the outside and gooey on the inside.
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Stromboli and Garbage Bread
If you prefer a hearty, rolled-up pizza rather than an open-faced pie, Stromboli and garbage bread are for you. After stretching pizza dough into a large rectangle, top it and roll it into a log. Stromboli recipes can lean traditional, like this pepperoni and cheese pizza Stromboli, or be more creative. Garbage bread, an unfortunate name for a delicious dish, captures the spirit of using whatever you have in the fridge and rolling it up in stretched pizza crust.
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Stuffed Rolls
Pizza dough is great for bite-sized snacks and appetizers like these air-fryer pizza puffs. You don’t need to roll the dough into a large circle or rectangle. Instead, shape bits of dough into small disks with your fingers. Add your favorite fillings and pinch the seams back together, gently rolling back into a ball. To ensure crisp, golden rolls that don’t explode, don’t overfill them and avoid fresh veggies that will leak too much moisture.
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Pull-Apart Bread
Instead of bread dough, use pizza dough to make a sweet or savory pull-apart bread. It can be as simple as dipping small pieces of dough in a flavored butter, like this pull-apart garlic bread, or it can become a pull-apart pizza with pepperoni and cheese tossed with the dough bits. Whatever flavors you choose, coating each piece of dough with butter or oil ensures that when it bakes, the pieces don’t completely merge, allowing you to pick them apart, piece by piece.
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Flatbread
Making a flatbread is similar to making a pizza because you first need to stretch the dough into a large, thin crust. However, to keep it from puffing up, skip resting the stretched crust and immediately top and bake it. The crust can be cooked in the oven or on the grill, like this Mexican street corn flatbread, and then topped with all kinds of sauces, vegetables and herbs. Since the crust is thin, flatbreads make great appetizers, lunches or light dinners.
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Focaccia
Focaccia has a light, airy texture with big air pockets throughout, but the basic dough is very similar to pizza dough. As with this quick focaccia bread recipe, starting with prepared pizza dough skips much of the rising time. Press pizza dough into an oiled baking dish or sheet pan, dimple the top, and add oil, herbs, salt or other ingredients like olives or veggies. For a thinner focaccia, bake it as soon as the dough fills the pan. For a tall, thick focaccia, let the dough rise until jiggly, then dimple, top and bake.
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Garlic Knots
There is a reason you see piles of garlic knots at most pizzerias, ready to be served with your pie. Pizza dough is the perfect vehicle to roll, cut and twist into a knot for a tasty snack. No fancy technique is required to shape these rolls, just roll pieces of dough into logs and then tie each into a knot. Brushing them with plenty of garlic and butter, as with these garlic knotted rolls, lets the flavors soak into the crevices and softens the exteriors so they’re more tender than chewy.
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Pigs in a Blanket
Pigs in a blanket, aka hot dogs or sausages wrapped in dough and baked, are often made with refrigerated crescent roll dough or flaky puff pastry. Replacing those options with pizza dough requires no real change to the recipe and yields a snack that’s a little less rich and buttery—so you can enjoy even more of them before reaching your limit. Since pizza dough will puff and expand more than other types of dough, leave some hot dog unwrapped at each end.
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Khachapuri
Khachapuri is a traditional cheese-filled, boat-shaped bread dish from the country of Georgia. The yeasted dough that holds the savory, melty filling is similar to pizza dough, making pizza dough a great timesaving replacement. Shape the dough into a circle or oval, fill it with cheese and crimp the edges into a rim to contain the filling as it bakes. There are many versions of khachapuri and recipes simply inspired by the dish, like these spinach-egg breakfast pizzas, so have fun and experiment with different ingredients.
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Potpie
Instead of pie dough or puff pastry, use pizza dough for the golden lid on your favorite potpie recipe, as in these Mediterranean turkey potpies. Roll pizza dough until it covers the filling (we recommend about 2 ounces of dough for an individual potpie), press it around the edges of the dish to seal and then poke a few steam vents in the top. Brushing the crust with beaten egg white before baking will give it a sheen and help it become as golden brown as a butter-based dough.
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Cinnamon Rolls
Pizza dough is great for dessert, too, though it’s particularly suited to recipes with a nice hit of sugar or frosting since pizza dough is not sweet on its own. Instead of homemade or prepared bread dough, like these cinnamon rolls with cookie butter filling, roll pizza dough into a large thin rectangle and top with butter, cinnamon and sugar. Roll, slice and bake just like any other classic cinnamon rolls. The treats won’t be as pillowy and soft as classic cinnamon rolls, but they are still delicious.
Recipes Using Pizza Dough FAQ
What are the different ways to cook pizza dough?
Baking pizza dough in a hot oven is the most common way to cook pizza dough, but you can also make grilled pizza, Dutch oven pizza, cast-iron pizza or fried pizza dough. If you have been considering a high-powered outdoor pizza oven, we found the best Ooni pizza ovens to try so you can replicate the char and flavor of a wood-burning or brick oven at home.
Can you turn pizza dough into bread?
Pizza dough can be turned into some types of yeast bread, but it doesn’t have the proper structure for every kind. Pizza dough is dense and sturdy, so it will never have the fine, plush crumb of sandwich bread and it doesn’t have a high enough ratio of water for something like ciabatta. But with some extra rise time and shaping, pizza dough makes great focaccia bread, soft breadsticks and homemade rolls. You can even boil it in baking soda-spiked water and bake it for a pretzel-like taste and appearance.
What dessert can be made from pizza dough?
Pizza dough is a blank canvas. Making dessert pizza recipes or flatbreads with sweetened cream cheese and berries or stuffed rolls filled with chocolate and toasted nuts is as easy as making a savory dish. To keep it from tasting like plain bread, brush the rolled-out crust with melted butter before baking to keep the exterior soft and then experiment with your favorite sweet ingredients, from Nutella or frosting to marshmallows and candy.
