All over the world this dish is one of the most popular. According to research, 36% of Americans believe that pizza is the perfect breakfast. And it’s hard to disagree with them. Pizza made from the “right” ingredients can provide almost 27% of the energy daily required by the body. Another plus of this dish is that it can be cooked with a wide variety of fillings. In this article, we introduce pizza recipes with chicken and cheese, as well as with the addition of other ingredients. Be sure to dwell on how to cook a good dough, which is always obtained from everyone who tries to make it.
The perfect pizza recipe with chicken and cheese
It is difficult to find a person who could resist a slice of flavored pizza with juicy toppings on a thin crust. This dish is loved by absolutely everything - with white or tomato sauce, with meat or vegetables, with thick sides and without them. Some people prefer to eat pizza for breakfast, while others dine on it daily.
The final taste of the dish depends not only on the filling, but also on the dough. The thickness of a real Italian pizza is 3 mm. And this rule is strictly observed in every self-respecting pizzeria. To make the dish more useful, many people prefer to use boiled or baked chicken instead of salami and other smoked meats. Well, cheese is the main ingredient of this dish anyway. It turns out both tasty and healthy.
Even a photo of pizza with chicken and cheese cannot convey how juicy and fragrant it can turn out. It’s better to do 2-3 at once, because it flies off the table very quickly.
List of ingredients
Conditionally, the process of making pizza with cheese and chicken can be divided into 3 steps:
- Kneading the dough.
- Harvesting sauce with filling.
- Baking products.
At each stage, a specific set of ingredients is required.
To knead the dough you will need the following products:
- flour - 220 g;
- water - 125 ml;
- dry yeast - 1 ¼ tsp;
- sugar - 1 tsp;
- salt - 1 tsp;
- olive oil - 1 tbsp. l
Tomato pizza sauce is prepared from the following ingredients:
- tomatoes in their own juice - 400 g;
- garlic - 2 pcs.;
- salt - ½ tsp;
- black pepper - ¼ tsp;
- basil - 1 bunch;
- olive oil - 2 tbsp. l
For the filling, it is necessary to prepare the following products:
- boiled chicken fillet - 60 g;
- mozzarella cheese - 125 g;
- Parmesan - 50 g;
- pickled cucumber - 1 pc.;
- tomato sauce - 3 tbsp. l
Now you can proceed directly to cooking.
Pizza dough
Do not think that absolutely any dough can be used for this dish, because the main thing is the filling. This is actually a profound error. If the dough turns out as thick as a roll, then it will no longer be pizza. You definitely won’t give this to the guests. That is why the test should be given special attention:
- In a small but deep bowl, breed dry yeast with slightly warm water. Add sugar immediately. You can skip this ingredient, but with it the yeast will begin to work faster.
- After 15 minutes, you can begin to knead the dough. Sift flour and salt into a clean bowl. In the center, make a deepening and pour a yeast dough into it.
- Knead the dough, working first with a fork and then with your hands. It will be sticky at first, and then begin to gather in a lump. At this stage, you need to add olive oil to it.
- Continue to knead the dough for 10 minutes. During this time, it will become more elastic, supple, smooth. It can even be stretched out by hands - it will not tear.
- Cover the dough in a bowl with a damp towel and put in heat for 30 minutes. Now shift it onto a surface dusted with flour and roll it to a thickness of 2-3 mm. This amount of dough is enough for one pizza with a diameter of 30 cm.
Best Pizza Tomato Sauce
Many housewives habitually lubricate the rolled dough with ketchup. That's just such a pizza just can not be called useful, especially when it comes to sauce bought in a store. But it can also be prepared at home. The recipe for the most delicious tomato sauce, which is suitable for pizza with chicken and cheese, and for pasta, is to perform the following steps:
- A bunch of fresh green basil to disassemble into leaves, separating them from the twigs.
- Heat olive oil in a pan. Dip the basil leaves and garlic squeezed through the press into it. Fry the ingredients for 1 minute.
- Add the tomatoes from the can and mash them in a pan with a spatula. Fresh tomatoes (450 g) can also be used if pre-doused with boiling water and peeled.
- Salt the sauce and pepper. Cook it for another 5 minutes or a little more if fresh tomatoes are used.
- Grind the sauce with a submersible blender or grind through a sieve to make it uniform in consistency. If necessary, return it to the fire and warm it up for several minutes to the desired density.
Step by step cooking
When all the components of the pizza are ready, you can start assembling and baking the product:
- Preheat the oven to a temperature of 250 °.
- Roll out the dough on a table sprinkled with flour and put it on a baking sheet.
- Lubricate it over the entire surface with tomato sauce.
- Cut the boiled fillet into small cubes or disassemble into fibers by hand. Put it on top of the tomato sauce.
- Grind the pickled cucumber into cubes and add to the chicken.
- Lay out the mozzarella mini balls on top. If a large piece of cheese is used, it must be cut into slices and spread over the surface.
- Sprinkle the dish with grated Parmesan.
- Bake pizza with chicken and cheese in the oven at the lower level for 8-10 minutes. Once the cheese is browned on top, you can remove the pan.
Pizza with chicken, tomato and cheese
If you want the filling to be more juicy and piquant, you can add tomatoes and bell pepper to it. The taste will turn out to be more interesting, and the appearance - appetizing.
The process of making pizza with chicken, tomatoes and cheese consists of the following steps:
- Knead the dough and put it in a warm place for half an hour.
- Meanwhile, do the stuffing. Cook or remove tomato sauce from the refrigerator.
- Raw chicken fillet (70 g) cut into 1x1 cm cubes. Fry it over high heat in a small amount of vegetable oil. Transfer the finished filet to a plate and cool.
- Cut the tomato into slices, and chop the pepper into small cubes.
- Roll out the dough and put on a baking sheet. Grease it with tomato sauce on top, distribute the fillet, sprinkle with chopped pepper and arrange the circles of tomatoes.
- Send the baking sheet to the oven, preheated to 220 °, for 15 minutes. 2 minutes before cooking, sprinkle pizza with grated cheese so that it melts.
Hawaiian pizza with chicken and pineapple
The following pizza is distinguished by an interesting combination of tastes. Juicy pineapple perfectly complements dry chicken breast, and melted cheese perfectly completes this composition. To make such a pizza is very simple:
- Fry chicken breast (300 g) on two sides in vegetable oil (3 tbsp. L.). No need to bring the fillet to readiness. Fry quickly, 2 minutes on each side. Inside the fillet should remain pink.
- Cool the chicken breast a little and cut into small pieces.
- Cut canned pineapples (300 g) into cubes, grate hard cheese (70 g).
- Collect pizza: grease the dough with tomato sauce, distribute chicken slices on top, then pineapples. Sprinkle the ingredients with cheese immediately.
- Bake pizza with chicken, pineapple and cheese for 12 minutes at a temperature of 200-220 °. When serving, cut the product with a special round knife.
Closed pizza with chicken and cheese
The dough can be prepared according to the above recipe, but only from it you will get not one, but three products. It will be the same pizza with chicken, mushrooms, cheese, but in a slightly different form. It is convenient to take closed pizza with you as a snack. When cooking, no one should have any special difficulties:
- Divided mixed and increased in volume dough into 3 parts. That is how many products will come out of it.
- Roll the first lump of dough into a cake, and cover the other two with a film so that they do not dry out.
- Put the filling on one half of the tortilla. Lubricate the dough layer with tomato sauce (1 tbsp.), Put sliced boiled or smoked chicken (60 g), several thin slices of champignons, canned corn (1 tbsp.). Add a handful of grated cheese and a few basil leaves (optional).
- Cover the filling with the free part of the dough and carefully pinch the edges. It should be a crescent-shaped pie.
- On the top of the pizza, make several punctures through which steam will escape during baking.
- Similarly, make 2 more pizzas.
- Bake in a very hot oven for 12 minutes. Allow the pizza to cool slightly, covering it with a clean towel.
Cooking Tips & Tricks
The following secrets will help novice cooks quickly learn the recipe for insanely delicious pizza with chicken and cheese or with any other toppings:
- To knead the dough, it is recommended to take good quality flour, ideally Italian grade “00”.
- For pizza with a diameter of 30-32 cm, use no more than 3 tablespoons of tomato sauce. It should be thick enough, otherwise the dough will “float”.
- A perfect pizza topping consists of no more than 4 ingredients. Its layer should not be thicker than 1 cm.
- Spread greens on the dish immediately before serving. It will turn out brighter and tastier.
- Pizza should be baked in a very hot oven, preferably on a special stone and only on the lower tier. Then the dough will cook faster, and the filling will remain juicy.
And remember, everything is important in a perfect pizza - dough, toppings, and temperature, and baking time.