There’s nothing that says “party tonight” quite like the fragrance of homemade pizza, and this mini pizza bar is a simple solution you can deploy the next time you are responsible for a last-minute family get together. The advantages of a pizza bar are that it:
a) will please everyone’s unique tastebuds
b) is quick to prepare
c) is simple to clean up
d) tastes and smells FABULOUS
e) keeps everyone in the kitchen and around the table visiting for a long time
Mini Pizza Bar Ingredients
- pizza dough (try Bobby Flay’s recipe here)
- lots of shredded cheese
- Pizza sauce
- Your favorite barbecue sauce
- Assorted pizza ingredients (sliced olives, mushrooms, pepperoni, chopped cooked chicken, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, spinach, sliced cherry tomatoes, chopped red onion).
Prepare and slice your favorite pizza ingredients in advance and display them in individual serving dishes so guests and pick and choose.
It’s best to make the pizza dough ahead of time, but this quick recipe stirs together and raises in about an hour, so you don’t need a lot of advance warning. Each person gets a hunk of dough to spread out to create their own mini-pizza. Around here, we love these mini cast-iron “Skookie” pans that were one of Jill’s inspired family Christmas gifts. If you don’t happen to have a set, consider gifting some to yourself soon. They are great for giant cookies and hot-out-of-the oven brownie sundaes. In the meantime, you can simply let family members pat out their own circular mini pizza (about 8 inches in diameter) onto a piece of parchment paper. A paper plate will also do. With or without parchment paper, you’ll be able to slide the finished mini pizza off onto a cookie sheet, and cook several of them at a time.
Using mini iron cooking skillets (known as “Skookie” pans), we lined each skillet with some pizza dough and spread on the sauce–BBQ sauce in this case.
Next, your guests will choose from a “pizza bar” of favorite pizza toppings and create their own masterpieces.
Toppings for the spinach artichoke chicken pizza above included
- Pizza sauce
- Mozzarella cheese
- Cooked chicken chunks
- Drained artichoke hearts
- Fresh spinach
- Feta Cheese
This guest’s mini-pizza included:
- BBQ sauce (for the base)
- Mozzarella cheese
- Artichoke hearts
- Sliced plum tomatoes
- Sliced olives
- Fresh spinach
- Feta Cheese
Once everyone’s pizza is assembled, slip the individual pizzas into a 425 degree oven for about 10 minutes, or until the edges are golden and all of the cheese is melted.
You can bake as many as 8 mini 8-inch pizzas in the oven at a time. When you allow guests to choose their own favorite toppings, no two pizzas are ever alike.
Serve a Caesar salad, a rootbeer float, or a tall glass of lemonade on the side, and you’ll turn your mini pizza bar ingredients into a delicious meal. Cleanup is as easy as letting each guest rinse out his own skillet. If you place mini pizzas directly onto cookie sheets, you’ll save a little cleanup time by putting the cookie sheets aside to soak as soon as the pizzas are served.
Find a willing companion and swap half of his BBQ chicken pizza for half of your chicken artichoke pizza.
