While we were dating, my husband surprised me with a dinner date, where he made pizza. He used a pre-made Boboli crust and topped it with pizza sauce, pepperoni, and shredded cheese. After we got married, it became a tradition to make pizza on our wedding anniversary. Our pizza recipe has come a long way from those Boboli crust days and has evolved into this 30 Minute Crispy Thin Crust Pizza.
This recipe makes 8 mini pizzas, about 8-9 inches in diameter each. We have tried making one big giant pizza in the past but ended up with a longer baking time (10 minutes), soggy pizza, and burnt edges. So our preferred way is still the mini pizzas.
This recipe is a copycat of Blaze pizza. Though we don’t have a wood burning oven , we make do by setting the oven to 500F. Yes, 500F. The first time I set the oven to 500F was scary. Will the house burn down? Will the oven explode? None of those things happened! Just perfectly baked crispy chewy thin crust pizza … drum roll please … in 5 minutes!
If you have a pizza stone, let it preheat in the oven at 500F. For those that don’t have a pizza stone like me, use an upside down baking sheet so that no rims get in the way of pizza transfer to and from the oven. Once the pizza stone or the baking sheet heats up for 20 minutes at 500F, it will be hot hot hot and ready to cook those pizzas to crisp perfection. We can usually fit 2 mini pizzas on the half sheet baking tray.
To get thin crust pizza, we roll out the dough on parchment paper to between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick. It’s important to roll the dough as evenly as possible so that it can bake evenly. Start rolling the dough on parchment paper because once we roll it out, it’s hard to pry off and move. We rarely roll the dough into a perfect circle; it’s usually some oval or rectangular shape. After we roll out the dough, I usually trim off some of the extra parchment paper so that no overhangs cover up the other mini pizza in the oven. You can save those trimmed off pieces of parchment paper to make stickers with the kids! But that’s for another post 🙂
What’s so great about these mini pizzas? Everyone can have his/her own individual pizza, topped with exactly what he/she wants and placed exactly where he/she wants. Our kids love to use cookie cutters and play with the dough before actually rolling them out and decorating with various toppings. Whatever creation they come up with, it is theirs and for their tummies only.
Our kids generally don’t roll their dough as thin as we want for thin crust pizza. But their creations are generally small enough to still cook in 5 minutes. If you decide to have thicker crust pizza, you may need to up the cook time.
This 30 Minute Crispy Thin Crust Pizza is a great way to start cooking together as a family. I must warn you though, be prepared for 5 minutes of blissful silence (with the exception of chewing sounds) as everyone digs into their first slice of heaven.
30 Minute Crispy Thin Crust Pizza
Equipment
- Parchment paper or aluminum foil lightly greased with butter
- 2 half sheet baking trays
Ingredients
Pizza Crust
- 1 C warm water
- 1 tbsp yeast active dry or instant
- 1 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 C all purpose flour
Pizza Sauce
- 3/4 C spaghetti sauce
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
Pizza Toppings
- 2 C shredded mozzarella cheese 1 8oz bag of cheese
- your favorite pizza toppings pepperoni, ham, sausage, pineapples, bell peppers, mushrooms
Instructions
- Place a baking tray upside down in the oven and then preheat the oven 500F. This will heat up the baking tray so that it can act as our pizza stone.
- If you have instant yeast, put the yeast in the mixing bowl. If you have active dry yeast, warm the 1C of water in the microwave for 20 seconds. Let the active dry yeast activate in the mixing bowl with the warm water for 10 minutes.
- Put the rest of the ingredients in the mixing bowl and knead for 3-5 minutes and then let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
- While the dough is resting, make the pizza sauce by combining the spaghetti sauce and the tomato paste. Prepare the rest of your favorite toppings.
- Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Place each piece of dough on a sheet of parchment paper and roll out to about 1/8 inch thick (basically as thin as you can).
- Top with pizza sauce, then the mozzarella, and then the your desired toppings.
- Slide two parchment paper of pizza onto another upside down baking tray. Then gently and carefully slide both parchment paper of pizza onto the pizza stone/baking tray in the oven.
- Bake for 5 minutes and remove carefully from the oven by sliding the parchment paper onto your upside down baking tray. Transfer to a baking rack to cool.
- Bake all the remaining pizzas in the same way. Dig in & enjoy while hot!
Adapted from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe Quick and Easy Foolproof Pizza Dough.
