Pepperoni Pizza with Ricotta and Hot Honey

If you’ve never tried ricotta or hot honey on pizza before, this is your sign. We first experienced this irresistible flavor combo about a year ago at a brewery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and it was so good we haven’t stopped thinking about it since! Which is why we’re finally sharing our own decadent version of a pepperoni pizza with ricotta and hot honey.

You might be asking yourself, is ricotta or hot honey actually good on pepperoni pizza? Absolutely! These two ingredients are one of the best ways to upgrade a classic pepperoni pizza, in our opinion. The fluffy texture and sweet flavor of the ricotta adds a nice contrast to the salty, greasy pepperoni, while the hot honey gives the whole pizza a little extra zing. Balanced out with fresh basil, these simple ingredients add a new layer of depth to a regular old pepperoni pizza.

When you make it with our fluffy homemade pizza dough, you’ll think you’re eating takeout from your favorite local pizza joint. It’s that good. Try this jazzed up pepperoni pizza next time you’re feeling adventurous in the kitchen (or for an at home date night when you want to impress your SO) and indulge!

Hot Honey and Ricotta Pepperoni Pizza Ingredients

This restaurant style pizza recipe is basically an upgraded version of a classic pepperoni pizza with tomato sauce, featuring delicious ricotta and hot honey. Here’s everything you’ll need to make this pizza at home:

• Pizza dough
• Pizza sauce
• Shredded mozzarella cheese
• Pepperoni
• Grated parmesan cheese
• Sea salt
• Ricotta cheese
• Hot honey (honey, chili oil, and white vinegar)
• Fresh basil

There are so many types of pizza crusts out there (thin crust, thick crust, Neapolitan, etc.). We like to make homemade dough so that we can select the appropriate type of crust for the pizza style we want. For this jazzed up pepperoni pizza, we adapted this thin crust New York style dough recipe to yield the perfect crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside crust.

If you’re intimidated by the idea of making pizza dough from scratch, you can always use store-bought dough instead. Just note that baking times may vary depending on the type of dough you use.

We also love making this easy homemade pizza sauce since the flavor is so much more authentic than any store brand we’ve tried. But again, you can use store bought if you want to make things even easier.

This pizza features 3 types of cheese – mozzarella, parmesan, and ricotta. The salty parmesan helps to balance out the sweetness of the ricotta, so definitely don’t skip this ingredient!

Finally, hot honey and fresh basil are the finishing touches that take this pepperoni pizza over the top. It’s super easy to make your own hot honey at home with just regular honey, chili oil, and white vinegar – but you can always use a store bought version if you prefer.

How To Make Pepperoni Pizza with Ricotta and Hot Honey

Making our pepperoni pizza with ricotta and hot honey is a 2 day process, if you want to make the dough from scratch (which we highly recommend!). Every step is broken down below, from preparing the dough to stretching it, assembling the pizza, and baking.

If you’re going to simplify this recipe and use store bought dough, skip to Step Two: Assembling and Baking.

Step One: Pizza Dough

1. First, make the pizza dough 1 to 2 days ahead of time. Gently combine warm water and bread flour in a large mixing bowl, then let it sit for about 20 to 30 minutes. This is known as the autolyse technique, which kickstarts the gluten formation process and yields a more flavorful dough.
2. Then, add the yeast, sugar, salt, and olive oil to the dough and mix until well combined, either using your hands (wet them first to help prevent sticking) or with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer. Let the dough rest for another 30 minutes.
3. Next, knead the dough in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment for about 10 minutes, until it’s roughly shaped into a ball. You may have to coax the dough off the hook every few minutes (turn the stand mixer off first!) if it gets stuck.
4. Finally, roughly shape the dough into a ball. Coat the inside of another bowl with olive oil, then transfer the dough to this bowl and roll it around so the dough ball gets coated in the oil. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours.

This pizza dough will be slightly sticky – it has a higher hydration level (meaning a greater ratio of water to flour) than you might be used to seeing from store bought dough. Wet your hands before working with it to help prevent sticking.

Step Two: Assembling and Baking

1. Remove the pizza dough from the fridge about an hour before you want to make the pizza so it can warm up to room temperature. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 500 degrees F.
2. Next, prepare your toppings. Make the hot honey by whisking honey, chili oil, and white vinegar in a small bowl until well combined, then set aside. 
3. Then, make a piping bag for the ricotta. Fill a small plastic bag with the ricotta, pushing it down towards one corner of the bag. Then, twist the opposite corner to lightly seal the cheese in the bag. Using a pair of kitchen shears, snip about a quarter inch off of the corner of the bag with the cheese so that you can pipe the ricotta out onto the pizza.
4. Now, stretch the dough. Generously flour a clean work surface and your hands, and lightly dust the pizza pan and the top surface of the dough with flour. Carefully pick the dough up out of its bowl and transfer it to the work surface. Now, slowly and gently use your fingers to spread the dough out into a circular shape on the work surface – be careful so as not to pop any of the air bubbles trapped in the dough. Since this dough has a higher hydration level, it will want to spread out naturally, so shaping should be fairly easy.
5. Then, transfer the dough onto the prepared pan and gently finish shaping it into a 12 to 14 inch round to fill the pan.
6. Now it’s time to assemble the pizza. Top the dough with an even layer of pizza sauce, leaving about a quarter- to a half-inch of space around the edges for the crust. Sprinkle evenly with mozzarella cheese, add the pepperoni, then sprinkle with grated parmesan and a pinch of salt. Then, pipe the ricotta into small dollops (about a half-inch tall) spaced out evenly across the pizza.
7. Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the mozzarella is bubbly and browned and the ricotta is lightly browned on top.
8. While the pizza is in the oven, finely chop a few fresh basil leaves for finishing the pizza. You don’t want to do this step too early, as the basil will oxidize (turn brown) the longer it sits after chopping.
9. Finally, top the pizza with a drizzle of hot honey and the fresh basil. Slice and serve hot!

When adding ricotta cheese to pepperoni pizza, you might be wondering if the ricotta goes on the pizza before or after baking. Either works – but we like to add the ricotta before baking so that it gets warm and lightly toasted in the oven. This results in little pillows of ricotta that are a bit crunchy on the outside yet fluffy on the inside, which is heavenly to bite into!

Tips For Success

Depending on how hot your oven runs, and the type of dough you use (if you’re using store bought), the baking time may vary. Turn the oven light on and keep an eye on your pizza the whole time it’s baking, using visual cues to tell when it’s done rather than relying on a timer. You’ll know it’s ready when the cheese is nice and bubbly with some brown spots, and the crust looks crispy.

If you have a large cooling rack, you can transfer the pizza to it right when it comes out of the oven. The extra air flow it allows underneath the pizza helps the crust stay nice and crispy on the bottom. Let the pizza cool for a few minutes once it’s out of the oven, then add the final toppings before slicing.

If you make homemade pizza often, we highly recommend investing in a pair of pizza scissors! We find they make much cleaner slices than a pizza cutter, and we love that it means you can slice the pizza right in the pan or on a cooling rack.

Storing and Reheating Leftovers

This pizza is so good, we can almost guarantee you won’t have any leftovers. But in case you do, know that you can store and reheat this pizza just like any other leftover pepperoni pizza!

Wrap leftover pizza slices in aluminum foil (or put them in a food storage container) and keep in the fridge for up to 5 days. Reheat in the oven at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Our sweet, savory, and spicy pepperoni pizza with ricotta and hot honey is a surefire way to shake up Friday night pizza dinner! Not only is this pizza super fun to make, but it’s also so simple that you won’t believe how flavorful it is. It tastes like something you’d find at a gourmet pizza restaurant – even though it’s just a pepperoni pizza dressed up with a few special ingredients.

Try our recipe for pepperoni pizza with ricotta and hot honey and don’t forget to leave a rating and a comment to let us know what you think!