Puff Pastry Pizza Poppers | Crispy One-Bite Party Pizza | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with puff pastry pizza poppers. That's right, puff pastry makes a terrible crust for pizza. If you actually try to make something that looks like a pizza, right, that's going to be the recipe for soggy, greasy disappointment. But by using a very simple French technique I'm about to show you, we can make a miniature version where every bite is crispy, flaky, pizza flavored perfection. And to get started, we need some frozen puff pastry dough. And I'm using that one that comes in four frozen panels that we have to unfold and break apart. And yes, as usual, we'll work with this stuff as close to frozen as possible. And no matter what brand you use or what size or shape it comes, I like to lay it out on parchment paper so we don't have to use any additional flour on the surface. And once we have that laid out, we will grab the key to the whole operation, which are some round cookie cutters. Right, this technique is very simple and easy, but you do need a set of these to make it work. And what we'll do is press that partially frozen pastry out nice and flat. And we'll take the larger of our two cutters, and we'll start punching some circles out. And for me, the ideal size for this first circle is going to be about 2 and 1/4 to 2 and 1/2 in, which I think gives us a perfect size portion. But this technique will work no matter what size you make them. And by the way, I cannot stress this enough, the pastry must be very cold when you work with it. Okay? At any point during this process, if it starts to get soft and sticky, just transfer the pastry into the freezer until it firms up. And once cut, we'll transfer those circles onto a parchment line sheet pan. And then what we'll do is take our smaller cutter and we will punch out the center. But we will not remove the pastry. We will simply push it back into place. And ideally for the center cutter, you want to pick a size that gives us an outside ring of dough of about 38ighs of an inch or a give or take. Anything close will work. And once we have that prepped, we'll transfer it into the center of a 400°ree oven for 20 minutes or until our pastry is puffed and golden brown. And yes, when you cut out round puff pastry, after it bakes, it turns into an oval, which my old friend Bob Ross would have called a happy accident since that kind of makes the shape of footballs, which makes an even more perfect game day snack. Oh, and if you're not familiar with Bob Ross, he was considered the Chef John of painters. But anyway, what we'll do is let those sit for 5 minutes and cool down a bit before we go ahead and flip them over. Oh, and don't worry if the center part separates. As you'll see, that's going to be no problem. And what we'll do once those are all flipped is take some Parmesan cheese and we will do a generous grating over each one. And not only is that cheese going to help to hold things together, but it's going to add flavor and add some crunchiness to the bottom. And that's it. Once those have been cheesed and flipped back over and spaced evenly, we will take a teaspoon and we will carefully press down the pastry in the center, which is going to give us the perfect space to place our fixins. And we really do want to press down nice and firmly since that's going to help give us that amazing texture you're going to experience later. And while we're doing this, we want to be careful not to mess with that perfect ring of pastry going around the outside, around the outside, around the outside. Since we don't want that part of our little pizza to be compressed at all. And that's it. Once those have been pressed as shown, we will pop them back into our 400°ree oven for just 7 minutes this time. And once that comes out, we'll simply let it sit and cool for about 10 to 15 minutes so that they cool down and dry out a bit. Oh, and while we're waiting, let me show you a cool trick for using up the extra dough. Okay, with puff pastry, we never want to wad up the scraps into a ball. What we want to do is stack them. And then we'll fold our parchment over and roll until we're down to about the original thickness. And this way, by stacking and rolling, we're going to maintain all those beautiful layers of butter in the pastry. And once cut, it should bake up just like the ones we did originally. All right. But if you wad everything up into a ball and roll it out, you will get something similar, but it's just not going to have the height and the flakiness that it would if you use this technique. But anyway, the point is you can use the extra dough trimmings to make more. And then once baked and cooled, what we'll do to finish these off is fill the centers with a generous tablespoon of pizza sauce, which could be our recipe, which is really, really good. But whatever your favorite pizza sauce is will work. And once we have those filled up, we'll go ahead and top this with some mozzarella cheese. And sure, Monterey Jack would also be a great choice for the cheese, which as you know, I often use where mozzarella is called for since it has more flavor, but I did actually do these with mozzarella, and they really were amazing. But technically speaking, any cheese would work. And I think we want to be pretty generous here. And at this point, it might look like we have a little too much sauce and cheese, but trust me, we don't. All right, nobody. And I mean, nobody wants a dried pizza popper. So, we do need to be fairly generous when we fill. And once we've applied the sauce and cheese of our choice, I'm going to go ahead and top each one with a slice of pepperoni. And as we place those on, we'll give them a little bit of a press. Right? We don't want to crush these, but we do want to compress things a little bit so that pepperoni doesn't just slide off. And of course, any pizza topping is going to work here. So, if you prefer sausage and peppers or mushroom and anchovies or pretty much anything else, go ahead and use it. I mean, you are after all the Chef John of what a French chef would call a pizza volley. But anyway, no matter what we top these with, we will pop that back into our 400°ree oven for about 20 minutes or until our pepperoni and cheese is bubbling and brown and our puff pastry pizza poppers hopefully look like this. And if everything's gone according to plan, the bottom should be beautifully browned. And as these cool, that parmesan underneath is going to crisp up. Speaking of which, we could probably let these cool on the pan. But for maximum crispiness, I do like to transfer them onto a rack. And we'll let those sit there until they're just barely warm before we serve them. But like all great party snacks, these are good hot, warm, room temp, and cold, as I can personally verify. But at any temperature, that my friends is the best way and in my opinion the only way to enjoy a proper puff pastry pizza. All right. If you try to do a normally sized pizza with puff pastry, except for maybe a few bites in the corners, most of it is limp and soggy and greasy and generally not pleasant at all. But with these, every single bite is flaky and crispy. So, we're able to enjoy that beautiful combination of the buttery pastry with those spicy, savory pizza flavors, which really is a magnificent combination. And we get to do all that while enjoying textural perfection. Oh, and for your average human, these are probably going to be eaten in two bites, maybe three. But technically, to call something a popper, we have to be able to eat it in one bite. So, I'm going to go ahead and give that a try. And that worked out very well. In fact, eating it in one bite is probably the way to go, and you'll be vacuuming up fewer crumbs. But anyway, no matter how many bites you take, these incredible little football-shaped snacks would be a huge hit at any party. And I really do hope you give them a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy.