Our chicken parm pizza recipe transforms the classic Italian pasta dinner into your favorite handheld treat for the ultimate homemade pizza night!
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We’re just about halfway through 2022, which means it’s time to share another Pizza of the Month! It can be challenging to come up with topping ideas for our homemade pizzas, especially when we want to create something totally new each month. So for our sixth new pizza recipe of the year, we took inspiration from a classic Italian dinner that I’m a huge fan of: chicken parmesan.
This flavorful chicken parm pizza is topped with classic pizza sauce, mozzarella and parmesan cheese, and crispy Italian breaded chicken cutlets. I learned how to make this delicious chicken from my mom – she used to make this recipe all the time, and it’s the perfect base for chicken parmesan! Since it’s so easy to prepare, it was a no-brainer to cook up a batch for our chicken parm pizza.
Perfect for a Friday night dinner, this homemade chicken parmesan pizza is great for movie nights or casual date nights. It’s a classic Italian fork-and-knife dinner transformed into your favorite handheld treat – what more could you ask for?
Chicken Parm Pizza Toppings
The toppings for our chicken parm pizza are surprisingly simple! This recipe is really not much different from a classic cheese pizza, with the addition of some crispy breaded chicken. Here’s what we put on our chicken parmesan pizza:
- Our homemade pizza sauce, a simple marinara-inspired tomato sauce
- A blend of shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheese
- Crispy breaded chicken cutlets, sliced into thin strips
- More shredded parmesan cheese (sprinkled on top of the chicken)
- Coarse sea salt, for finishing
We layer all these ingredients on top of Roman-style pizza dough, a recipe from our beloved Mastering Pizza cookbook. This recipe takes 24 hours to ferment in the fridge, so we prepare the dough the night before we want to make pizza. If you’re not up for making your own dough at home, this recipe works just as well with store-bought pizza dough! We love using dough from Whole Foods when we opt for store-bought because it’s so flavorful and crisps nicely in the oven.
How To Make Chicken Parm Pizza
Our chicken parmesan pizza recipe isn’t complicated and won’t take long to prepare. Here are a few helpful tips to ensure everything goes smoothly:
- The very first thing you should do is take the pizza dough out of the refrigerator and allow it to rest at room temperature – this will help make it easier to stretch when it’s time to assemble the pizza.
- Next, prepare the breaded chicken. Make sure you use enough vegetable oil to form a thin layer on the bottom of the baking sheet, since you want the chicken to cook in the oil. This is how you’ll get it nice and crispy.
- Pound the chicken with a meat tenderizer to make each piece the same thickness, so they cook at the same rate. Here’s a trick: put a piece of parchment paper on top of the chicken before pounding, and you won’t have to wash your meat tenderizer (unless it’s particularly juicy and seeps through the parchment paper).
- You can prepare the other toppings while the chicken bakes! For the sauce, you can either make a fresh batch following our recipe here, or defrost some from the freezer, which is what we typically do (we like to prep a large batch of sauce and portion it out into our Souper Cubes for easy pizza nights). For the cheese, add mozzarella and parmesan to a small bowl and toss with your hands to mix.
- When topping the pizza, don’t be afraid to get the sauce and cheese close to the edge of the crust. You only need to leave about a quarter to a half-inch of space around the edge, since the crust will puff up a bit during baking.
- Adding an extra sprinkle of shredded parmesan on top of the chicken gives this pizza an extra chicken parm-y flavor! And definitely don’t skip the finishing salt. It brightens everything up just a touch for an explosion of delicious flavor.
To be completely honest, we were pleasantly surprised by how much this pizza tasted like chicken parm! It’s got the ooey-gooey cheese, crispy breadcrumbs, and flavorful sauce you hope for in a classic chicken parmesan. Thrown on top of a crispy crust, you’ll forget you ever needed the pasta.
Try the recipe for yourself and experience a classic Italian chicken parm dinner in the form of pizza!
Love this recipe? You may enjoy these recipes, too:
- Slow Cooker Italian Meatballs
- Meat Lover’s Pizza
- Crispy Air Fryer Chicken Tenders
- Spinach & Artichoke Neapolitan-Style Pizza
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Chicken Parm Pizza
Equipment
- Meat tenderizer optional
Ingredients
Crispy Chicken Cutlets
- 2 to 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- ⅓ lb chicken tenderloins raw
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp milk
- ½ cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
Chicken Parm Pizza
- 250 g pizza dough Roman-style
- ½ cup pizza sauce
- 1¼ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup shredded parmesan cheese
- 2 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese for finishing
- Pinch coarse sea salt for finishing
Instructions
Crispy Chicken Cutlets
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and pour about 2 to 3 tbsp vegetable oil in a small baking sheet, just enough to form a thin layer on the bottom of the pan. (If your pizza dough is refrigerated, put it on the counter now so it has time to warm up.)
- Pound the chicken using a meat tenderizer until it has an even thickness.*
- Whisk egg and milk in a shallow dish and set aside. Add Italian breadcrumbs to a separate shallow dish and set aside.
- Add chicken to the egg wash and coat thoroughly, then transfer to breadcrumbs and coat well. Gently shake off any excess breadcrumbs before transferring chicken to the oiled baking sheet.
- Bake chicken until evenly crisped and cooked through, about 18-20 minutes, flipping halfway.
- Transfer cooked chicken to a cutting board and let cool for at least 2 minutes before slicing into thin strips. Set aside.
Chicken Parm Pizza
- Preheat the oven to 550 degrees.
- Lightly flour a 14-inch pizza pan and your hands. Working on the pan, stretch the pizza dough into a large circle roughly the size of the pan, gently pushing and pulling from the center outwards.
- Evenly spread the pizza sauce onto the dough, leaving about a quarter-inch of space around the edge for the crust.
- In a small bowl, combine shredded mozzarella and 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese. Gently toss with your hands, then sprinkle over the pizza.
- Top the pizza with the sliced chicken cutlets, then sprinkle the remaining 2 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese over the chicken. Sprinkle a pinch of finishing salt over the pizza.
- Bake for 7 to 9 minutes, or until crust is crisped and cheese is bubbly and golden brown.
- Let pizza cool for at least 2 minutes before transferring to a large cutting board. Slice and 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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