Have you had success making pizza in an air fryer? Homemade pizza with homemade fresh dough?
We got a new toaster oven yesterday with an air fry feature. Most toaster ovens--including this one--advertise that they will cook a 12" pizza. But by this they mean a 12" freezer pizza that you can put directly on the oven rack. Pizza trays for cooking 12" pizzas are larger than 12" in diameter and thus do not fit in the oven. But I've been looking at that nice little air frying basket that came with the oven and thinking it might make a most excellent pizza tray.
Here is the thing: I am trying to avoid using my main oven as much as possible, since it is a gas oven. But homemade pizza is one of the great loves of my life. I cannot give this up!
Whole wheat crust. Spicy tomato sauce. Fresh baby spinach leaves. Part skim Mozzarella, habanero & cracked black pepper Monterey Jack, 4-year-old cheddar, and 100% goat's milk feta cheeses. Shiitake mushrooms. Onions. Fresh pineapple. Oven-roasted chicken breast. Pickled hot banana peppers. Sun-dried tomatoes. And anchovies. Ain't nobody makes a freezer pizza like this!
But how to make it in the toaster oven? Normally I would cook these for 20 minutes at 425°F in the gas oven. This is barely enough to cook the crust through, under so many toppings! (I would go hotter, but 425 is the max temp recommended for the pizza trays, since they are non-stick.)
I did once cook homemade pizza in our old toaster oven. That was a huge hassle and took forever. (I had prepped the pizzas, then discovered the gas oven would not light. Had to freeze the pizzas, piled high with toppings--which I did not have room to do all at once--then cook them one at a time in the old toaster oven. Both toaster ovens supposedly heat to 450°F. But the old one clearly does not. It took 40 minutes to cook each pizza, and even at that the dough was undercooked.)
But now with this new oven? It likely does get hotter than the old one. And it has the air fry feature. Which could be helpful?
"Air fryer pizza" is definitely a thing. I have seen many recipes. But most call for pre-cooked crusts of some kind. (Some suggest you can make your own crust, cook it blind, then dress it and finish cooking it. But my pizza dough is meant to rise when it's baked. It would get pretty pouffy with no toppings on it, I should think! And how cooked is cooked? I'm assuming only partial blind baking would be required. But what percentage of done are we talking here?) Recipes for air-fried pizza without pre-cooked crusts complain of the toppings burning before the crust is cooked. And I saw one recipe that cautions one to put the heavier toppings on top, because light weight toppings could blow off the top! Is that a thing? Food getting blown around by the air current?
I'm only cooking for 2 people now. So I'm thinking there must be a way to make pizza work in the new toaster oven. (Assuming I can get the cooking time down from the 40 minutes it took in the old toaster oven! We do generally try to eat at roughly the same time as one another.)
Anyone have any tips for me for making homemade-from-scratch pizza in either an air fryer or toaster oven?
We got a new toaster oven yesterday with an air fry feature. Most toaster ovens--including this one--advertise that they will cook a 12" pizza. But by this they mean a 12" freezer pizza that you can put directly on the oven rack. Pizza trays for cooking 12" pizzas are larger than 12" in diameter and thus do not fit in the oven. But I've been looking at that nice little air frying basket that came with the oven and thinking it might make a most excellent pizza tray.
Here is the thing: I am trying to avoid using my main oven as much as possible, since it is a gas oven. But homemade pizza is one of the great loves of my life. I cannot give this up!
Whole wheat crust. Spicy tomato sauce. Fresh baby spinach leaves. Part skim Mozzarella, habanero & cracked black pepper Monterey Jack, 4-year-old cheddar, and 100% goat's milk feta cheeses. Shiitake mushrooms. Onions. Fresh pineapple. Oven-roasted chicken breast. Pickled hot banana peppers. Sun-dried tomatoes. And anchovies. Ain't nobody makes a freezer pizza like this!
But how to make it in the toaster oven? Normally I would cook these for 20 minutes at 425°F in the gas oven. This is barely enough to cook the crust through, under so many toppings! (I would go hotter, but 425 is the max temp recommended for the pizza trays, since they are non-stick.)
I did once cook homemade pizza in our old toaster oven. That was a huge hassle and took forever. (I had prepped the pizzas, then discovered the gas oven would not light. Had to freeze the pizzas, piled high with toppings--which I did not have room to do all at once--then cook them one at a time in the old toaster oven. Both toaster ovens supposedly heat to 450°F. But the old one clearly does not. It took 40 minutes to cook each pizza, and even at that the dough was undercooked.)
But now with this new oven? It likely does get hotter than the old one. And it has the air fry feature. Which could be helpful?
"Air fryer pizza" is definitely a thing. I have seen many recipes. But most call for pre-cooked crusts of some kind. (Some suggest you can make your own crust, cook it blind, then dress it and finish cooking it. But my pizza dough is meant to rise when it's baked. It would get pretty pouffy with no toppings on it, I should think! And how cooked is cooked? I'm assuming only partial blind baking would be required. But what percentage of done are we talking here?) Recipes for air-fried pizza without pre-cooked crusts complain of the toppings burning before the crust is cooked. And I saw one recipe that cautions one to put the heavier toppings on top, because light weight toppings could blow off the top! Is that a thing? Food getting blown around by the air current?
I'm only cooking for 2 people now. So I'm thinking there must be a way to make pizza work in the new toaster oven. (Assuming I can get the cooking time down from the 40 minutes it took in the old toaster oven! We do generally try to eat at roughly the same time as one another.)
Anyone have any tips for me for making homemade-from-scratch pizza in either an air fryer or toaster oven?
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