Breakfast Pizza

bkfst-pizza-cover

We had friends for brunch this past Sunday, and I decided to try something I’ve been meaning to do for a while:  Breakfast Pizza.  It’s basically a pizza dough base, topped with egg, cheese, and whatever meat you like, if you’re a meat eater (we are).  In order to contain the egg, which might otherwise run off the pizza, I baked this pizza in an unfinished, plain black 12-inch cast iron pan.  The result is closely related to the Italian frittata.

Use any non-enriched dough you like; either the basic master, or a rye dough (without caraway or other flavorings), as I did here, or even whole wheat. 

First, preheat your oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) for 20 minutes, with the cast-iron pan on a middle shelf.  There’s no need for a baking stone in this situation.  Roll out a piece of dough to a thickness of 1/8-inch, into a 12-inch diameter circle (so that it will fit into the bottom of the hot pan).

Open the oven and get the pan into position so you can drop in the dough (it’s  much easier to handle the hot cast iron pan with a handle-covering potholder).  Then, “dock” (puncture) the dough all over with a fork:

1-dock-with-fork

Now bake the crust “blind” (without toppings) for a while, about 5 minutes.  Check midway to see if you need to poke any new air bubbles with the fork. 

Season four lightly-beaten eggs with salt and pepper, and pour over the dough.  It will distribute unevenly over the uneven surface, which is fine.  Top with about a quarter pound of grated cheddar, mozzarella, colby, or gruyere, then a tablespoon of grated parmigiano-reggianno cheese (or other Italian-style grating cheese).  That grated hard-cheese topping really helps this dish to brown.  If you like, use some thinly-sliced prosciutto or other Italian-style ham. 

Bake for 5 to 10 minutes– all depends on your oven and how thin you actually rolled your dough.  I finished the pizza under the broiler to get beautiful browning and finish cooking the eggs.  Make sure they’re not too runny, but don’t overbake. 

I promise you, this is one of the simplest brunch dishes you can make, and the result is absolutely delicious.  Vary the toppings however you like– everything seems to work. 

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66 thoughts to “Breakfast Pizza”

  1. Yum! Another great recipe to use with your easy-peasy dough! I never lack for ideas thanks to both of you! I need to go home and mix up a new batch of dough — but the fridge only has room for one container, and I’m torn between brioche and a simple master recipe! What a dilemma!

  2. oooh…I wanted to make a breakfast pizza yesterday with some leftover dough I had but I didn’t know how to keep the egg from running off. DUH a pan!! silly me (I ended up making a calzone with mine instead)

  3. Just got your book and want to try your recipes. I have a Kitchenaide
    Steam Assist Oven. This cycle is especially used for “crisping” items
    that are baked or roasted. It is recommended for baking crispy breads
    as bursts of steam are dispensed and the oven door is not to be
    opened. Do you know what temp setting and timing I would use with
    this oven for your basic recipe? Should I just follow the recommended
    suggestions from the instruction bullet from Kitchenaide? I assume
    your degrees and times are based on non convection oven settings.
    Have you ever used Convection Bake for your breads and what
    adjustments would you suggest? When converting normally I set the
    degrees to 25 lower when using convection baking.

    1. Karen: Convection’s great, just adjust the temp 25 degrees downward (use an oven thermometer to check this). As for the steam assist, I haven’t used it, but that’s the way it works in pro ovens– I think it will be great. Just follow KitchenAid’s directions and let us know how it goes. Jeff

  4. Thanks – that looks so good I plan to make it tomorrow. Am I correct that you do not need the 40 minute rest before baking?

    I actually have another question that I wanted to ask. I have been making the bread for several weeks now and we love it (I bought the book on Kindle and in paper too)! At first, I was using a cast iron pan in the oven with steam and while delicious, the bread doesn’t sing or have that shiny crust when I remove it from the oven. I also do not have huge air holes inside but have a very good custard texture.

    I next got a baking stone that fits exactly on one rack in the oven but had much the same result. I am using a convection oven with the master recipe. I know my oven is running a little cool but the bread bakes up well. Any thoughts?

    1. Mila: See my comments to Karen re: convection here. But in your case, it may be that convection is dissipating the steam. Try no-convect and let us know if that solves the problem. Jeff

  5. I love your book! I use it constantly and it has really gotten me back into bread baking. However, i want to use a sourdough starter in the recipes. How do I do this? Do I just substitute 1 cup starter for all of the yeast? Or do I still add the yeast? I realize this is a very fundamental question, but having never used a starter before I need the most basic help. Also, do you have a favorite starter recipe? Thanks!!!

    1. Pam: Use about 1.5 cups of active starter in place of an equivalent amount of water and flour in our recipes, to produce a final consistency like in our videos (see the “videos” tab on this website). You can try omitting all the packaged yeast, but I’ve had better results decreasing (to, let’s say, one-quarter the usual dose). At some point we’ll publish our starter recipe….

      Jeff

  6. Thanks, Jeff! That is very helpful. I’ve had the book for about 2 months now and my husband jokes that our house is like a boulangerie! I have tried the basic boule recipe. Portugese Broa, bagels, pretzels, light whole wheat… we love them all! I was never much into baking so this book has really changed my life. Now I bake homemade, artisan bread 3-4 times per week. I am truly looking forward to “Healthy Bread” coming out in October!

  7. Can you use liquids other than water to add to the dough? What should we stay away from? I had a bunch of tomatos about to go and so I made salsa. To make a non-watery salsa, I drained the tomatoes. But I had all this wonderful left over juice. So I did the light wheat recipe and used the “tomato juice” and water and added the yeast to that. I was worried that the acid would kill the yeast, but I got TONS of rise from it. The bread turned this lovely wheaty red gold. But, the bread didn’t come out tasting of tomato at all. So I would like to try again, but with all of the juice being tomato.

    But it set me to thinking what other juices or liquids could we use???

    1. Jenny: Yes, you can use other liquids, and their all over our second book, which is available for pre-order on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/qukupq. Acid, within limits, does not hurt yeast growth– for example, ascorbic acid is used as a yeast enhancer (we don’t go in for additives though).

      I’ve used sweet juices, about half and half with water and the result is terrific. You may have to turn down oven heat though— sugar can burn in the crust. Jeff

  8. Hi Jeff, I just bought your book Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day. I’ve read it and I’m really excited about trying the recipes. I do have one question. I always use King Arthur Flour when I bake. As per your book, using this may not be the best choice as it is a little high in protein. After reading the chapter on ingredients, I ran to the grocery store to buy flour. There was only one besides King Arthur that was unbleached. I think it was Gold Medal, but it was presifted. Is presifted OK? What do you use? Many thanks for great book and what I know will be a fun time baking. Thanks, -Rayna

    1. Rayna: King Arthur’s a great flour, it just takes a little more water; take a look at our post on this at https://artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=140. Gold Medal unbleached all-purpose is fine, it’s OK that it’s labeled pre-sifted. You never have to sift, whether or not a flour is labeled that way.

      I use GM AP, and Zoe uses KAF AP! Jeff

  9. Am going to make this for breakfast tomorrow. Just wanted to let you know that i’m a convert….your recipes take all the hard work out of breadmaking and make it doable every day. My only problem is we have a tiny fridge and I have to take my dough bucket to work to put in the fridge there and then bring it home again to use. AND i want to have more than one dough going at once….

    1. Kathie: I once knew a guy who was anti-refrigeration (there was a movement afoot!). He refused to refrigerate our dough, finding cool spaces around his house. In the Minnesota winter, that’s actually not too hard. BUT… the dough generally ill only last a couple of days before going soupy and overly fermented. Just a thought. Jeff

      Bob: I think you should be good to mix the AP with the bread flour, sounds like a good idea. You may have to play with those proportions to get a consistency that looks like what we have in our videos, see https://artisanbreadinfive.com/?page_id=63. Jeff

  10. I’m about to make my first master recipe. I grabbed a big Costco sack of AP flour. When I got home over an hour later, I found out it was bleached. It has 10% protein. If I mix 3/4 AP with 1/4 12.9% bread flour I have, that comes to 10.7% Should I use the AP alone or mix it or what? The next Costco trip is about a month away. Thanks!

  11. Love the breakfast idea.
    One unrelated question. My boyfriend loves the bread I made from your book (I’m hooked by the way), but he prefers “sandwich loaf” size loaves, so slightly taller than the round loaf. Can I make any of the bread recipes in a loaf pan? Or does one recipe over another work best for that?
    Thanks!

  12. For convenience sake I made ahalf batch, 2 1/4 cup AP bleached and 1 cup bread flour. I added a little less tan 2 oz extra water. The dough is sticky, but doen’t flow to asume the shape of the container – at least not initially. I could only watch the Chi Trib video and it looks like that dough stayed heaped up on the side. Should it flow like molasses or fill the container but retain an uneven top or something else?

  13. I finally read my June 16th Womans Day magazine and saw your web site listed, checked it out and am now waiting for my copy of your book. Looks really good.

  14. Well I wanted toget started so I baked n over sized dinner roll. It came out great! Very crusty. I’m trying a few trick loaves – variations on the parmesan-chard bread with the basic recipe, since it’s what I have. I’ll wait a few days and see how the flavor evolves in the basic dough. I’m really looking forward to the brioche when I’ve finished the basic batch. This is great! Thanks to both of you for the book and videos. I’ve sent one as a birthday present and recommended it to many friends. I’m looking forward to the next book!

  15. The breakfast pizza was great! I have already made it twice with rave reviews from the kids. I have another question, I have made bagels twice – once with the bagel dough and the other time with the Master Recipe. Both times the bagels were delicious but incredibly flat. I am using all purpose unbleached flour and/or KA unbleached. I did not use bread flour, is this why?

    Thanks and I love the book 🙂 I am a working mom of four kids and everyone is amazed that I am baking delicious bread too.

    1. Caroline: Most all of the recipes work well in a loaf pan, yes. We recommend non-stick loaf pans, but grease them anyway because wet dough sticks.

      Bob: Well, thicker than molasses, for sure. It should slowly fill the container; yes, the top will be uneven. Don’t sweat about this, there’s a pretty wide acceptable range. Glad your dinner roll experiment worked well.

      Elizabeth: That Woman’s Day article was a hit for us, glad you saw it… Online at https://tinyurl.com/nz3286

      Mila: This recipe definitely works better with bread flour, yes. Or let it sit longer before boiling, that might make some difference for you.

      Jeff

  16. A local restaurant in Phoenix serves these on their breakfast menu and call them Bressias. Thanks for showing me how to make them at home!

  17. I made a mistake on the name of the breakfast pizzas. They are called Brizzas. The name of the restaurant is scramble. The c is backwards and the am is in red.

  18. I have made many batches bread from your book, however I’d like to have a more air holes throughout the crumb. A lighter taste. Any suggestions. Love the book, can’t wait for the next!

  19. I want to incorporate tomato sauce and jalapeno’s into one of your pizza dough recipes. Does it matter how much sauce I use? I am not asking about toppings (just to clarify). Hope to get a response

    Thanks- Ellen

    1. Hi Ellen,

      Are you talking about replacing the water with tomato sauce? Sounds quite interesting, but I’ve never done this so I’m afraid I don’t have a concrete answer for you. It will somewhat depend on the thickness of the sauce, but I would start with maybe a cup of sauce to replace the water??? You can add the jalapenos to the dough as well.

      Let us know how it goes! Zoë

  20. hi guys, LOVE the book. I make a batch of the light whole wheat every week and use it for the thin-crust pizzas. So good.
    I just bought a cast-iron skillet and would like to try a deep-dish pizza recipe I found on Cooking Light. Would the dough work in this case? I’m guessing I’ll need to use 2x the amount (2 “grapefruits”) to get the thick, chewy crust of a traditional deep dish. Just wondering if you’ve tried deep dish pizza and maybe how much of your 4-serving dough you used?

    Thanks, keep up the amazing work!

    1. Hi Sarah,

      Yes, I think it will be wonderful and tasty. Hmmm, I’m not sure how much dough to tell you to use? How big is your pan? 2x our recipe will probably result in too much dough. Given that the pan is probably not as wide as your typical rolled out pizza you may only need one 1-pound piece of dough, slightly more if it is a big pan. You may need to do some tasty experiments and let us know what you come up with! 😉

      Thanks, Zoë

  21. I never would have thought of substituting the sauce for water, I’m glad I asked! That makes good sense. I have been buying tomato jalapeno crusts at my local farmers market and I can’t get enough of them. When I bought your book, I got inspired to make my own. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

    Thanks Zoe,

    Ellen

  22. well, I used about 1/3rd of the batch to make a deep dish pizza in my 12″ cast iron skillet. The results were pretty tasty! I was afraid the crust wouldn’t cook through, and it was a little doughy, but it tasted fine. I think I may pre-bake the shell next time, and use less toppings, as it got pretty soupy in there (used mushrooms, artichokes, onions and lots of sauce!) But all around a huge thumbs up from the family!

  23. I am about to mix up a batch of Olive Oil dough for pizzas for my daughter’s birthday party Friday and was wondering about par baking the crusts. I am going to have a pizza bar so the girls can make up their own personal pizzas. But I wanted to have all the crusts ready to go ahead of time. Do you have any suggestions about how to do this? I was thinking about baking them for about 4-5 minutes in a 450 degree oven. Do you think this sounds right?

    Congratulations on the new book! I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. I use your first book many times a week and just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!!!

    Thanks for everything!

    Susan

    1. Thanks Susan. You need to bake till the crusts are set, that is, that they are firm enough to transport. I’m guessing you will need a little more time than what you specify here, at this temp. Don’t let it brown or the result will be dry; complete the browning at a higher temp at your final destination. Jeff

  24. I really really really don’t want this to sound mean – but I simply must finally mention a pet peeve here. OH how I wish commenters would restrict their comments to how a recipe turned out AFTER they have made it.. – vs. – “this looks so good!!!”. Of course it is going to look good. This is a food blog, by great pastry chefs. I find that the only time I read a food blogs’ comments is if they are little mini-posts from people who add their 2 cents on how well the recipe worked, and what they did (if anything) differently, as well as how the dish was received. Otherwise I just move on. It simply is not helpful, enlightening or amusing to keep reading over and over and over again about how good a dish LOOKS. I mean really, if it looked blech, it wouldn’t BE on here, right??

  25. Kristin,
    It’s hard for some folks to contain enthusiasm about a project and concept so startlingly new to us like Jeff and Zoe’s, so be prepared to skip some posted replies.

    However, I have to agree that these type of posts add nothing to the learning curve we are all going through. I crave more feedback and info–I WISH there was a forum here so we could start threads and discussions about the methods and recipes.

    Chowhound’s boards have an informal rule which does go a long way to keeping people on track: if a comment doesn’t further discussion about *deliciousness* then it’s best not posted. Chowhound (dot com) may be a place for you to look for more on-topic posts and threads about ABin5.

    Meanwhile, I still WISH there was a separate place to specifically post about recipes and experiments HERE.

    (psst–oh, Santa Webmaster? )

  26. I’m also gonna ask Santa to organize Jeff and Zoe’s posted recipes in an index (easily searchable).

    I can’t tell you how much time I spend looking back through the archives (not easily searchable) for a recipe, scroll scroll scroll.

    oh, and also, an FAQ page for basic (non-specific) questions.

    1. Sue: We’re working on it… (all of these web ideas– you’re not the first to ask). The books remain our indexed source for recipes though.

  27. I own both your books and enjoy the extra ideas that you post on your web site. I’m sure going to give the Breakfast Pizza a try as it sounds great! Looking forward to your next book that I’ll be adding to my library!

  28. I adapted this recipe for the half a pound of Italian Semolina dough I had left and a 10” cast iron skillet. I still used 4 eggs, but I added minced onions (I was too lazy to chop one.), and I would have added tablespoon or two of salsa if we hadn’t been out. I decreased the shredded sharp cheddar slightly and used 2 Tbsp of pecorino romano cheese instead of parmigiano-reggianno. It turned out GREAT! The crust is nice and crispy on the bottom, and the best part is that you can eat it like a slice of pizza, so I’m eating some while I’m typing!

    I was worried when I slapped the dough into the pan because I didn’t get it to the edges very well, but the egg came off the pan with just a little left behind. I used a plastic scraper to lift as much away from the sides before I plated it.

    And no kidding, this was easier than scrambled eggs. Next time I’ll add some Canadian bacon.

    1. Rebecka: Might be a bit of a strong flavor if you replace ALL the water– how about 1/3 and see what you think. Dial it up if you like the flavor. Jeff

  29. Also, approx how many oz of dough is good for a 12″ pan and since I am not experience in this and probably won’t get the exact right size as the pan, should I aim for slightly bigger or smaller circle? Thanks again for answering my question, we are definitely on a pizza track here, wish your book is out now!

    1. Rosalina: Try about 10 ounces of dough for a thin-crusted pizza, and 16 for thicker. Slightly smaller is easier to deal with.. Jeff

  30. Rosalina: Yes, assuming that it’s not topped with anything, this can be a nice way to get both sides browned. Obviously can’t do it with the breakfast pizza or other pizzas. Jeff

  31. I made this recipe this weekend on a whim. I used olive oil dough, and grabbed a ball of dough just smaller than a grapefruit. I was very alarmed when the eggs poured off the crust and into the pan, but most of it stayed central on the crust.

    The results were delicious, and I only wished I’d distributed the cheese closer to the edge of the pan. I’m still quite new to cast iron pans, so I was very impressed with how easily the pizza slid out of the pan. The spilled egg did not stick. All four family members–including myself, my husband, a teen and a tween–loved it and would eat it again and again. The teen was even good-natured about being woken up earlier than noon for breakfast.

    Thanks for all the delicious recipes, and for all the extras on the website!

    1. Cheryl: Yes, but make sure you’ve done a thorough job “baking blind” (without burning) or this will be difficult to bake through with GF– that has a tendency to be gummy and I worry about the eggs soaking in. Should work though.

  32. I love making your breakfast pizza! My only complaint is that when the eggs spill over the side and sneak onto the bottom of the pan, it stops the crust from getting as crispy as I’d like. Any tricks to avoiding this?

    1. have you tried using a larger dough-circle, letting it crawl up the sides of the pan, creating something like a shallow bowl? or just use a little less egg. Are you using a big enough pan?

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