Air Fryer Pizza

I remember as a child, my mom used to often make pizza on a Saturday. She would make a yeast, let it rise, and make a proper thick dough. We would make a lot and freeze them for another time. So when I saw this recipe for deep dish chorizo pizza, I jumped at the chance to experiment. It would be great to make a pizza in the air-fryer in a short amount of time, so I gathered the ingredients and started cooking.

The recipe comes from “30- Minute South African Air-Fryer Cookbook” by Louisa Holst. Louise is also the author of “The South African Air-Fryer Cookbook” (One and Two). So she has great experience with this appliance. She also wrote a “One Pot” cookbook – recipes that you can use on the stove top, or on a gas stove when the power’s down. I reviewed her “Lamb Hot Pot” here.

Deep-Dish Chorizo Pizza

Ingredients

• 1x 410g tin Italian-flavoured tomatoes
• 500g ready-made bread dough
• 30 ml olive oil
• 300 ml grated mozzarella cheese
• 100g chorizo sausage, sliced
• half a red onion, sliced
• a few pitted back olives (optional)
• fresh basil and grated Parmesan cheese, to serve.

Method

1. Empty the tin of Italian tomatoes into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Allow to simmer over a medium heat for 10 minutes, uncovered. Stir occasionally. While the sauce is reducing, prepare the other ingredients and the pizza base.
2. Preheat the air fryer to 180 degrees Celsius. Roll out the dought into a shape that will fit into the basket of your air fryer. It should be about 1cm thick. Spray a sheet of baking paper with cooking spray. Place the rolled-out dough on the paper and place it in the air fryer. Spray the dough with olive oil and bake for 10 minutes.
3. Remove the dough from the air fryer, turn it over and peel off the baking paper. Using the back of a spoon, press the dough down to make a slight hollow leaving a 2-cm border around the edges.
4. Brush the dough with olive oil, return to the air fryer and cook for a further 10 minutes.
5. Open the air fryer and sprinkle a little mozzarella cheese over the pizza base, then spoon on the reduced tomato sauce. Top with a littel more cheese and the chorizo, onion, olives (if using) and the remainder of the mozzarella. Bake for 10 minutes, or until cooked through.
6. Remove the pizza from the air fryer and allow to stand for 10 minutes, before cutting it into slices. Garnish with the grated Parmesan and fresh basil before serving.

My experience

When I bought the ready made dough from Checkers, it was quite a big packet when I got it on the Friday, and by Saturday it had ballooned up further. I’m not sure if the air made it weigh more, but it came to between 800-900g. I decided then, to make two pizzas, splitting the dough in half. For all the other ingredients I kept the measurements, but I split them in half as well. In my experience, this was quite rich already, and could have been watered down / or less as well.

Basically, what I ended up with was a pizza pie. I didn’t mind the thickness of the base, I liked that, but the tomato and sausage was very rich. After having a slice I put it back in the air fryer for another five minutes, it really needed to be cooked more all the way through.

I think if I were to do this again I would:

• water down the tomato tin a bit, make it thinner.
• Divide the bread dough even more, maybe 250g per pizza
• use less sausage as well.

Time taken: about an hour and a half.

Verdict

I think this pizza has potential if I could get it right.

My son, who is an extremely fussy eater, had this to say: “It would have been better if I had made it.” I used a circular plastic liner to help, but he argued I should have used the actual basin of the air fryer. I do think the liner made it a lot easier to get it in and out though. He also said it was too concentrated.

A note on the liner: I saw it and I got it at Woolworths for R139. But a few days later I see it at Pep home for R59.99.

Dear Reader: I am sure that you are probably a better cook than me. Do let me know if you have more success with this recipe!

There are also a lot of other recipes in this cookbook that I want to try – in particular the crunch burger and the granadilla condensed milk tart. As soon as I see the granadillas I think I will try that one – I know Nicky will love it.

Related post: Three Beginner-Friendly Air Fryer Chicken Recipes You’ll Love

Disclaimer: I was given the book.