Nearly every pizza chain here in the US has a BBQ Chicken Pizza on their menu. This is not that overly sweet sauce, rubbery chicken pizza that you usually find. This Pizza is going to ruin your favorite pizza chain for you, and save you a lot of money!!
This BBQ Chicken Pizza is the perfect flavor profiles of tangy BBQ sauce, smoky bacon, sweet corn, pickled jalapeños, and melted mozzarella and doesn’t turn the whole pie into a sugar bomb as a lot of pizza chains do.
I like to make this one on my Cold Fermented New York Pizza Dough. For a same day meal it works on my 3 hour New York Pizza Dough. And don’t tell an Italian I told you this, but you could also make it on my Neapolitan Pizza Dough.
What you’ll need
Your giant spatula for dropping pizzas and retrieving them. I love the Epicurean one because it’s dishwasher safe and wood so the dough sticks less than steel.
Pizza Steel + Pizza Screen (NY Dough)
Pizza steel is essential for getting that crisp base that gives you that foldable NY slice. And the pizza screen is my fun hack for actually making giant NY sized pizzas in your home oven.
Makes cutting the pizza much easier than a knife would be. You could also use kitchen shears.
Pizza Oven (Neapolitan Dough)
We have owned the original Ooni for 7 years and love it. If I were buying it today, I’d get the newer version. We also have owned a Roccbox for 4 years and love it. When I worked at Sur La Table I used the Indoor Breville and was blown away by it — I will definitely invest in one once we have a kitchen with the counter space for it!
Why You’ll Love This BBQ Chicken Pizza
The sauce is the star. Apple cider vinegar gives this BBQ sauce a bright, tangy backbone that bottled sauces just don’t have. It’s very balanced and not too sweet.
The flavor profile here is perfection! Sweet, smoky, tangy, and a little spicy. Sweet corn and honeyed BBQ sauce play against pickled jalapeños and hot sauce, with bacon and smoked paprika rounding out the smoke.
This isn’t your pizza chain delivery pizza down the street. This is artisan restaurant quality. Take it from someone who literally founded a pizzeria.
BBQ Chicken Pizza with Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar BBQ Sauce
Ingredients
For the Apple Cider Vinegar BBQ Sauce
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- ½ cup Worcestershire sauce
- ½ cup honey
- ¼ cup tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons unsulphured molasses
- 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- ½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon hot sauce Frank’s RedHot or another vinegar-based hot sauce
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
For Topping the Pizza
- 1 ball New York-style pizza dough about 500–550 g
- ⅓ Apple Cider Vinegar BBQ Sauce
- 2 cups shredded low-moisture mozzarella cheese
- 1 cup diced grilled chicken
- 4 slices bacon cooked and diced
- ½ cup sweet corn kernels
- ¼ –½ small red onion thinly sliced
- Pickled jalapeños to taste
- Extra BBQ sauce for drizzling
- Chopped fresh cilantro optional
Instructions
Prep your toppings and make the BBQ sauce
- Get everything ready before you touch the dough. Dice your grilled chicken and cooked bacon, slice the red onion, drain the corn, and have your cheese and pickled jalapeños standing by.
- For the sauce, combine the apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire, honey, tomato paste, and molasses in a medium saucepan. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat, whisking until the tomato paste dissolves completely.
- Stir in the garlic, onion powder, black pepper, salt, smoked paprika, Dijon, and hot sauce. Drop the heat to low and let it simmer 15–20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it coats the back of a spoon. Pull it off the heat and let it cool slightly while you move on.
Stretch the dough
- Get your pizza stone or baking steel in the oven and crank it to 550°F (or as hot as your oven goes) for at least 45–60 minutes. It needs that time, don’t rush it.
- Flour your surface, press the dough into a disk with a slightly thicker edge, then stretch it by hand into a 18-inch round. Move it to a floured pizza peel.
Sauce and top it
- Spread a thin, even layer of your BBQ sauce over the dough, leaving about an inch bare around the edge for the crust.
- Sprinkle the mozzarella over the sauce, then layer on the chicken, bacon, corn, red onion, and pickled jalapeños. Spread everything evenly, you want every slice to get a little of it all, not one bite loaded and the rest bare.
Bake, slice, serve
- Slide it onto the hot stone and bake 7–10 minutes, until the crust is deeply golden and the cheese is bubbling with a little color on it.
- Let it rest on a cooling rack for a minute or two, this keeps the crust from going soft underneath. Finish with a drizzle of extra BBQ sauce and a scatter of cilantro if you’re using it.
- Slice it up and eat it while it’s hot.
