Pizza loaf combines your favorite pizza toppings with the idea of a stromboli, calzone, and pizza all in one! Pizza dough is loaded with toppings, braided, and baked to perfection in this deliciously fun way to enjoy pizza! Try just the classic pepperoni pizza loaf or go crazy and fill it with veggies, meats, and whatever you want!
Easy Pizza Loaf
If I had to pick one meal to eat before I die, it would hands down be pizza loaf with striped delight for dessert. This is my all-time favorite meal and not just because it’s nostalgic for me, because it’s delicious.
My mom has been making this for our family since literally before I can remember, maybe since I was a baby. Maybe even longer. It’s one of the most requested meals from everyone in my family because it’s that good.
It’s like pizza and a calzone but better. The outside of the dough gets slightly crunchy, the inside is soft, and the toppings get all warm and gooey. It’s a must-try if you’ve never tried it before!
And the best part of it is that you can customize it to your favorite toppings. Just make a couple of different loaves from one batch of dough and keep everyone happy!
Or if you’re a superwoman like my mom, you can make 15 different pizza loaves. That’s what we did last weekend – played this Super Bowl Squares game, enjoyed some buffalo chicken dip roll ups, and ate pizza loaf.
But most people just make two or three for a regular dinner.
Oh and the leftovers are amazing, maybe even better than the originally baked pizza loaf!
Why you’ll love Pizza Loaf
- Fun way to eat pizza – if you like pizza, you’ll love pizza loaf. It’s kind of like a pizza, stromboli, and a calzone had a baby. The crust on the outside combined with the gooey toppings inside is just the best.
- Easy to customize – pick your favorite toppings, make one filled with just your favorite toppings and one with your kids – it’s perfect for the entire family!
- Great for a crowd – pizza loafs take up less space in the oven than a traditional pizza, so it’s super easy to make up a batch for a crowd! We typically end up making at least 10 different loaves when our family gets together and making the dough is easily the hardest part!
Pizza Loaf Ingredients
The main ingredients you’ll need totally depends on what toppings you like on your pizza. I bet they taste even better inside of a pizza loaf than on top of a pizza.
But here’s what you’ll need regardless of what toppings you want to use!
- Pizza dough – homemade or store bought (like actual pizza dough, not a pre-made crust) works. This is the same day pizza dough we use and it’s AMAZING. It makes two full-size pizza loaves.
- Pizza toppings – whatever you want will likely work inside of pizza loaf. Pepperoni, olives, sausage, bacon, veggies, whatever. The only thing I’ve never actually tried and not sure it’d work is ham and pineapple. Ham is obviously okay but the pineapple may make the inside soggy.
- Mozzarella cheese – lots and lots of cheese!
- Pizza sauce – again you can use homemade or store-bought. Pizza sauce is for dipping the pizza loaf in, not adding into the pizza loaf (that’ll make it soggy). And it’s a must!
- Butter – This isn’t a requirement but swiping it across the top after the pizza loaf comes out of the oven does make it taste better
Tip!
Want to switch things up? Try this same concept with other fillings inside of just pizza toppings. We regularly make sandwich loaf with lunch meat and cheese. Other things that could be good would be buffalo chicken (basically a loaf version of this buffalo chicken dip) and breakfast loaf with scrambled eggs and bacon. It’d be kind of like these breakfast rolls but with it being a loaf instead of rolls.
How to make pizza loaf
Making pizza loaf is so easy, especially if you just buy store-bought dough. Homemade is better but store-bought definitely makes it faster.
Here’s all you do to make it!
1 – Roll out the pizza dough
- Roll the pizza lough out into a long oval shape. Don’t do a square or circle – it has to be an oval/rectangle so you can braid properly, kind of like I did for these pepperoni rolls.
2 – Add the Pizza Toppings
- This part is important. Line your toppings up down the middle of the pizza dough leaving a few inches of dough all the way around so you can pull the braid over. If you top the entire pizza dough, you won’t be able to braid it and that’s a no-go.
Tip!
Make sure to put the cheese on the top, not the bottom. You can do both if you want (not necessary) but if you put the cheese on the bottom and not the top, the toppings just don’t stay together as well. It’s weird but true.
3 – Cut the pizza dough
- Using kitchen scissors, cut one-inch cuts along both sides of the dough, leaving the ends uncut. You’ll fold the ends in tightly so you don’t want to cut those parts as tempting as it might be!
4 – Braid the pizza loaf
- Starting on one end, pull the one-inch cuts of dough across the toppings, alternating sides until you braid it all the way from one end to the other.
Video Instructions!
I highly recommend watching the video below see this part because it’s easy but sounds confusing when you just read it.
Step 5 – Bake the pizza Loaf
- Bake the pizza in the oven at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until the dough is fully cooked and lightly browned.
- Remove from the oven and butter the top before slicing. You don’t necessarily have to butter the top but it definitely helps!
6 – Slice Your Pizza loaf
- While still hot, slice with a pizza cutter into slices about 2 inches thick or a little thicker for the ends (so it’s not just dough and has some toppings in it).
- Serve hot with your favorite pizza sauce for dipping. Or serve it at room temperature. It’ll still be delicious, promise.
Tips & tricks
Make your dough ahead of time then just roll out and make the pizza loaves right before you’re ready to cook them. You can make them and braid them ahead of time if you want, but I’ve found that it’s better to just braid and bake them right before serving (or else the dough tends to rise a lot more than it should).
Store any leftover pizza dough in a zipper top baggie or an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to five days.
To reheat, place slices in a cold oven, turn it on to 350 degrees, and let the slices of pizza loaf come up to temperature with the oven.
Don’t go overboard on the toppings but don’t go skimpy as well. Just think about if you were topping a normal pizza – too much cheese isn’t necessarily a good thing here!
Don’t skip the sauce. Since you’re not adding sauce to the pizza loaf (not recommend), it can be pretty dry if you’re eating it straight. Dipping the pizza loaf into a sauce is part of the experience and part of the dish!
Pizza Loaf FAQs
What kind of toppings should I put inside?
Pizza loaf can be made with pretty much any toppings other than ones like pineapple that are super liquidy. We’ve tried it with everything from ham and cheese to pepperoni to a veggie supreme. Part of the fun of the recipe (just like with homemade pizza) is trying all sorts of combinations!
What do you do with the ends of the pizza loaf when you’re braiding it?
I highly recommend watching the video in this post to see the braiding process. You can even slow it down to see exactly how my mom braids the pizza loaf. There’s an art to it for sure but once you get it down, it’s actually super easy! The ends are the trickiest (but not tricky at all) part.
More Pizza Recipes
If you like pizza, make sure to try these delicious pizza recipes next!
- Pizza roll ups – easiest pizza dinner ever made with just a few ingredients including a string cheese!
- Pizza twists – part breadsticks and part pizza, these are a fun side dish for an Italian dinner!
- Biscuits and gravy pizza – this fun breakfast pizza is a delicious play on biscuits and sausage gravy!
- English muffin pizzas – tops of fun pizza toppings plus tips for cooking these mini pizzas!
- Pumpkin pizzas – pizzas that are as cute as a pumpkin, tasty too!
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Pizza Loaf
Ingredients
- pizza dough homemade or store-bought is fine
- pizza toppings of your choice
- mozzarella cheese
- butter for topping the pizza loaf out of the oven
- pizza sauce for dipping
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
- Roll the dough out into a long oval shape.pizza dough
- Add toppings (cheese on top) to the middle of the pizza dough.pizza toppings of your choice, mozzarella cheese
- Cut the dough from the outer edge to the toppings, every one inch, around the dough
- Beginning on one end, fold the one inch dough sections over the ingredients creating a braid.
- Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until the dough is lightly browned.
- Remove from the oven and top with butter before serving hot.butter
- Serve hot with your favorite pizza sauce for dipping.pizza sauce
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