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BBQ Chicken Pizza

BBQ Chicken Pizza with Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar BBQ Sauce

Forget the bottled stuff. This sauce is sweet, smoky, and tangy in exactly the right proportions, pile it onto a crisp New York-style crust with grilled chicken, crispy bacon, sweet corn, and pickled jalapeños. Backyard barbecue, pizza form.
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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.