Make this delicious homemade buffalo chicken pizza as a fun date-night activity or as a crowd-pleasing party snack!
Jump to RecipeFive years ago on a cold, snowy Boston night, Alex and I had our first “real” (aka, not in the dining hall) dinner together in the warmth of a local joint ironically called New York Pizza. It was then that we discovered our mutual love of buffalo chicken pizza, and we’ve been together ever since! And we’ve eaten many, many pizzas together over the years.
Of course, we had to celebrate 5 whole years of being together with one of our favorite foods. Following a wine and cheese picnic in the park, we made homemade specialty pizzas for dinner: one spicy buffalo chicken pizza, and one sweet and tangy barbecue pulled pork pizza.
We love making pizza together, and it’s honestly not as intimidating as you may think! It’s one of the more fun recipes we keep on stand-by, because it allows for so much creativity. The options for pizza toppings are endless. It’s a great way to use up leftovers when you don’t know what else to do with them. Plus, once you get good enough at stretching the dough, it’s super easy to whip up a delicious homemade pizza that tastes better than takeout.
The best part of all, however, is that making pizza with your best friend is a fun cooking adventure that’ll probably make you laugh, and will definitely taste amazing – all because you made it together.
Our pizza-making adventure definitely made us laugh, because we attempted to make homemade dough for the first time. It went exactly as expected (totally horribly) and we were super glad we bought back-up dough from Whole Foods. Making pizza dough is not an easy feat, and we quickly learned that we should invest in a stand mixer before trying again. (Our poor hand mixer literally started smoking while trying to knead the dough!). Nevertheless, we were happy we tried something new, and it’s a great memory to look back on and chuckle at.
All of the specialty pizzas we’ve eaten over the years (including one of my favorites, from Woody’s Grill & Tap) inspired this recipe. I’m personally not a huge fan of ranch or blue cheese, so we went with a hot sauce base. We topped it with a blend of mozzarella and mild cheddar, then added some strips of spicy buffalo chicken, sliced red onion, and scallions. Next, we did our signature brushed crust, which makes any store-bought pizza dough taste 10x better in our book! Then we baked our pizza and finished it off with an extra drizzle of hot sauce and light ranch dressing.
We were seriously blown away by this buffalo chicken pizza recipe. It was so good. It tasted exactly like some of the best restaurant buffalo chicken pizzas we’ve eaten, and we were so happy that we’d gotten all the flavors just right. But this is only our opinion. So if you love buffalo chicken pizza as much as we do and want to try it for yourself, follow our recipe below and let us know your thoughts!
Love this recipe? You may enjoy these other buffalo chicken recipes, too:
- Buffalo Chicken Dip
- Buffalo Chicken Sliders
- Air Fryer Buffalo Chicken Taquitos
- Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese
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Buffalo Chicken Pizza
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 lb pizza dough
- ¼ cup flour for dusting
Buffalo Chicken Pizza Sauce
- 3 tbsp butter
- ½ cup Frank's Red Hot
- 1 tbsp light ranch dressing
Buffalo Chicken Pizza Toppings
- 1½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
- ¼ lb baked buffalo chicken (see below)
- Red onion sliced
- Scallions sliced thinly
- 1 tbsp butter melted
- Garlic powder
- Onion powder
- Sea salt
- Light ranch dressing
Baked Buffalo Chicken
- ¼ lb chicken tenderloin raw
- ¼ cup Frank's Red Hot
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp onion powder
- ½ tsp chili powder
- ¼ tsp ground red cayenne pepper
- 1 pinch salt
Instructions
- First, make the baked buffalo chicken. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine chicken, Frank's Red Hot, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and salt. Stir well to combine, making sure the chicken is evenly coated in the marinade. Set aside and marinate at room temperature for 15 minutes.
- Transfer chicken to a foil-lined pan and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until cooked through. Let rest for 2 to 3 minutes before slicing into strips, then set aside.
- While the chicken bakes, prepare the buffalo pizza sauce. Add melted butter, Frank's Red Hot, and light ranch dressing to a small bowl and whisk to combine. Microwave the sauce for 10 to 15 seconds at a time, as needed, to ensure a smooth texture as you whisk it.
- Next, combine mozzarella and cheddar cheese in a bowl and set aside.
- Next, stretch the dough. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and lightly dust a large baking sheet with flour, spreading it around evenly on the pan. Then, dust your palms with flour and begin to stretch the dough. Working over the baking sheet, use both hands (and gravity!) to rotate and stretch the dough into a rectangle roughly the size of your pan. Use additional flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands.*Lay your stretched dough flat in the pan. Dust your hands lightly with flour again, and gently reach underneath the dough to give the bottom side a very light coating of flour (this will keep it from sticking to the pan).
- Finally, assemble the pizza. Spoon the buffalo pizza sauce onto the dough a little at a time, spreading it around with the back of a spoon. Continue until the dough is covered with a thin layer of sauce, leaving about a half-inch border for the crust. You will likely have some sauce leftover – that's okay! You'll drizzle it on the pizza after it bakes.
- Next, sprinkle handfuls of the cheese blend onto the pizza. Start from the edges and work in towards the center, using a lighter hand, then add more cheese where needed to fill in the gaps. Finally, top the pizza with sliced buffalo chicken, red onion, and scallions.
- Lastly, season the crust to add some extra flavor! Brush the crust with melted butter and sprinkle lightly with garlic powder, onion powder, and sea salt.
- Bake the pizza for about 16 to 18 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned. Cool for at least 2 minutes before slicing.
- Finally, drizzle the pizza with the remaining buffalo sauce and light ranch dressing. Serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
If you have any questions regarding the information presented in this post, please refer to our Nutrition Disclaimer here.
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