Last updated: July 5th, 2024
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This thin crust BBQ chicken pizza is crispy, saucy, gooey, and full of tangy barbecue flavor – everything you want in a takeout style pizza night at home!
One of the most amazing things about pizza is just how many ways you can enjoy it. Standard cheese and pepperoni pizzas are perfect for an easy, delicious dinner at home. But when you feel like putting in a little more effort, a recipe like this thin crust BBQ chicken pizza is totally worth the added work!
This classic barbecue chicken pizza takes all your favorite ingredients and adds a smoky, BBQ’d flavor! This pizza is truly next level – made with crispy thin crust dough, marinated BBQ chicken, a blend of pizza and barbecue sauce, and gooey mozzarella cheese, it doesn’t get any better than this. From game day parties to date nights at home, this pizza will trick anyone into thinking you ordered takeout from your local pizza joint.
BBQ Chicken Pizza Ingredients
Any good pizza is made with 3 components – dough, sauce, and cheese. But a great pizza, like the best BBQ chicken pizza recipe you’ll ever try, also has delicious toppings and extra sauce to take things up a notch!
Our homemade BBQ chicken pizza has 6 components in total:
- New York style thin crust pizza dough (adapted from Amanda-Rae)
- A 50/50 blend of pizza sauce and BBQ sauce for the base
- Shredded mozzarella cheese
- Barbecue chicken, marinated and cooked on the stove for smoky flavor and char
- Sliced red onion and scallions for toppings
- An extra drizzle of BBQ sauce to amp up the flavor
Since the barbecue flavor is the most important part of a BBQ chicken pizza, we highly recommend making the BBQ chicken from scratch like we do – and using Sweet Baby Ray’s for the base and extra drizzle.
Here’s the full list of ingredients you’ll need to make our thin crust BBQ chicken pizza recipe:
- Warm water
- Bread flour
- Active dry yeast
- Granulated sugar
- Olive oil
- Salt
- Chicken breast or tenderloins
- Vegetable oil
- Apple cider vinegar
- Worcestershire sauce
- BBQ spices – garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, paprika, mustard powder, chipotle powder
- Pizza sauce (try our easy recipe here!)
- BBQ sauce
- Shredded mozzarella cheese
- Red onion
- Scallions
How To Make A Thin Crust BBQ Chicken Pizza
To make this homemade BBQ chicken pizza recipe, you’ll need to do a bit of prep work – but it’s so worth it! Nothing beats a crispy New York style thin crust dough topped with juicy, smoky, freshly cooked barbecue chicken.
Here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Make the pizza dough 1 to 2 days ahead of time. This allows enough time for the dough to finish rising in the fridge before you use it.
- Marinate & cook the chicken. Homemade BBQ chicken marinated with vegetable oil, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire, and a blend of spices tastes so good on this pizza. Plan to start this about 50 minutes before you want to have dinner.
- Stretch & prebake the dough. Prep the rest of your ingredients while the dough prebakes.
- Assemble & bake the pizza. Top the dough with the 50/50 blend sauce, then mozzarella, then BBQ chicken, red onion, and scallions. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, until the cheese is bubbly and the crust is golden brown and crispy.
- Drizzle, slice, and serve. Drizzle the cooked pizza with a generous helping of BBQ sauce and enjoy!
Note that if you want to make our easy pizza sauce recipe (here), you should prepare this 1 to 2 days ahead of time as well. You can even make it way ahead of time and store in the freezer – we recommend portioning it out for individual recipes so it’s easy to defrost the right amount when needed. We like to cook a batch every once in a while and freeze half cup portions in our Souper Cubes for easy pizza nights!
Why You’ll Love This Thin Crust BBQ Chicken Pizza Recipe
This homemade BBQ chicken pizza tastes just like your favorite pizza joint, only better! Made with fresh ingredients, including homemade dough, flavorful barbecue chicken, and crisp onions, you can truly taste all your hard work in every bite of this pizza. There’s nothing better than the crunch of the thin crust dough under gooey mozzarella and tangy barbecue sauce!
This pizza is perfect for a fun weekend dinner or game day treat. Even though it takes some prep work, the end result is totally worth the effort! It’s saucy, it’s gooey, and it’s packed full of classic BBQ flavor. It’s everything you could ever want out of a homemade BBQ chicken pizza.
Try our recipe and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a comment! And don’t forget to share if you love it 🙂
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Thin Crust BBQ Chicken Pizza
Equipment
Ingredients
New York Style Thin Crust Pizza Dough (adapted)
- ½ cup warm water
- 1¼ cups bread flour divided
- 0.125 ounce active dry yeast
- ¾ teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon olive oil plus ½ tsp for coating
- ¾ teaspoon salt
BBQ Chicken
- ½ pound chicken breast
- 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil
- ½ tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon paprika
- ¼ teaspoon mustard powder
- ⅛ teaspoon chipotle powder
Pizza Toppings
- ¼ cup pizza sauce
- ¼ cup Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce plus extra for drizzling
- 1½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- ¼ cup red onion sliced
- 2 tbsp scallions sliced
Instructions
New York Style Thin Crust Pizza Dough (adapted)
- Add water, ¼ cup bread flour, yeast, and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir well to combine and let sit until foamy and bubbling, about 20 minutes.
- Then add remaining 1 cup bread flour, 1 tbsp olive oil, and salt to the mixture. Stir to combine until a loose dough ball forms, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Using the dough hook attachment, knead the dough on low speed until soft and resilient, about 10 minutes.
- Lightly coat the dough ball in about 1/2 tsp olive oil and transfer to a clean bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours.
- Remove the dough from the fridge and let rest at room temperature for about 1 hour before making the pizza.
BBQ Chicken
- In a bowl, combine chicken, vegetable oil, apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, paprika, mustard powder, and chipotle powder. Marinate at room temperature for 20 minutes.
- Preheat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken, flipping every 3 minutes, until it reaches an internal temperature of about 160 degrees F, about 12 to 15 minutes total.
- Transfer chicken to a cutting board and slice into strips, about 1 to 1 and a half inches long. Set aside.
BBQ Chicken Pizza
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and and lightly grease a 14-inch pizza pan with cooking spray.
- Lightly dust your hands with flour and carefully stretch the pizza dough into a 14-inch circle. Pick up the dough and work around the edges, gently pulling and letting gravity help you, then lay the stretched dough flat onto the pan.
- Prebake the dough for 4 minutes. While it's in the oven, add pizza sauce and BBQ sauce to a bowl and stir to combine. This will be your 50/50 blend base sauce for the pizza.
- Remove pizza dough from the oven. Spread the 50/50 blend sauce evenly over the crust, leaving about a quarter to a half inch of space around the edges. Top evenly with mozzarella cheese, then BBQ chicken, red onion, and scallions. (See notes.)
- Bake until the cheese is bubbly and the crust is golden-brown, about 10 to 12 minutes.
- Finally, drizzle the pizza generously with extra BBQ sauce before slicing and serving.
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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