This pizza recipe starts with homemade dough and is topped with tangy barbecue sauce, grilled chicken, red onion. cilantro and cheeeeeeeese. Wanna try this low sodium pizza for your fam? Keep reading.
I will be the first to admit that barbecue sauce on pizza has never really been my jam. But this pizza packs so much flavor that it is really tough to pass it up. It definitely hits the spot when you are craving a cheesy flavorful pizza.
Tips for toppings:
- You can use less cheese. The cheese is the source of most of the sodium in this pizza. If your sodium restrictions do not allow that much cheese, or if you are looking to cut back on calories, you can reduce the cheese and this pizza will still taste great. You could easily reduce the cheese by half (possibly more) to make it suit your needs; there are so many other flavors on this pizza that it’ll still be yummy.
- Don’t like cilantro? Skip it. If you want something crisp, you can try adding a bit of shredded lettuce (after it’s baked of course).
- Try adding black beans. I’ve made a similar pizza with canned black beans and they are a great addition. You could even sub them out for the chicken if you’d like.
- Add some fresh tomatoes. I love tomatoes, and will add them to almost any pizza. I have tried a version of this pizza with tomatoes and (big surprise) love it that way. I put them on before baking, but you could add them after if you’d prefer.
- Use your favorite barbecue sauce. For this recipe, I use my recipe for Low Sodium Barbecue Sauce, but if you have a favorite low sodium sauce you can definitely use that instead. Mr. Spice makes a salt-free Honey BBQ sauce that is good as well.
Tips for working with dough:
- Check the temperature of your water. I always use a meat thermometer to measure the temp of my water (my favorite thermometer is a Thermapen, but you can use whatever you have). Shoot for water that is about 110°-115°. Remember that if the warm water goes into a cold bowl, it will lose a few degrees so you may want to measure the temp in the bowl.
- Let the dough rise in a warm place. I live in Montana, which means my house is not always the warmest environment for letting bread rise. My solution? I put the dough in the oven with the oven off, and the oven light on. The light creates enough heat to let the dough rise perfectly. By the way, I also put a sticky note on the oven controls to remind myself not to accidentally turn on the oven (I did this once – not pretty).
- Make the dough ahead. You can make the dough ahead up through the step where it rises for about an hour (until doubled in size). At that point, punch the dough down, form it into a ball, and refrigerate it in a bowl covered with plastic wrap until you are ready to use it. It should keep for 3-5 days in the fridge. On the day you’d like to use it, remove it from the fridge and let it rest in a warm spot for about two hours.
Barbecue Chicken Pizza
SODIUM COUNT: 302 mg sodium per serving; 1207 mg in the entire recipe
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
Ingredients
Crust:
- 1 ¼ tsp quick rise yeast
- ¼ tsp brown sugar
- ¾ cup warm water ((110°F to 115°F))
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 Tbsp powdered milk
- 1 ½ to 2 cups flour
- Additional olive oil for shaping the crust*
Toppings:
- ½ cup low sodium barbecue sauce**
- 10 ounces chopped grilled or seared chicken breast ((about 1.5 cups))
- 1 cup coarsely chopped red onion
- 6 ounces mozzarella***
- ½ bunch chopped cilantro
Instructions
- In a large bowl, whisk together the yeast, brown sugar, water. olive oil, and powdered milk.
- Add the flour, ½ cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. Once you have added enough flour to knead the dough (about 2 ½ cups), place the dough on a floured surface and continue to work in the remaining flour. Knead the dough for about 3-4 minutes.
- Place the dough into a bowl coated with cooking spray and set aside in a warm place covered with a light towel. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in size, about 1 hour.
- If you are making your own barbecue sauce, get it started now (see recipe notes).
- Preheat the oven to 425°F. If you are using a baking stone, prepare it by preheating it with the oven. If you are using a baking sheet, prepare it by spraying it with cooking spray.
- After the dough has doubled in size, punch down the dough and set aside to rest for a few minutes.
- Coat the dough with a bit of olive oil and slowly stretch it to the desired size (roughly 10″ x 14″). Place the stretched dough onto the baking stone (or sheet). It is easiest to stretch it on a sheet of parchment paper. You can move the entire sheet of parchment to the baking stone (or baking sheet).
- Top the crust evenly with barbecue sauce, chicken, onion, and cheese. Bake in the preheated oven for about 12-15 minutes or until the crust is golden and the cheese begins to brown. When you remove the pizza from the oven, top it with fresh cilantro and serve.
Notes
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION – Yield: 4 servings
Sodium: 301.8 mg, Calories: 562.3, Total Fat: 18.5 g, Saturated Fat: 6.9 g, Cholesterol: 52.1 mg, Carbohydrates: 60.6 g, Fiber: 4.1 g, Sugar: 10.3 g, Protein: 34.2 g.
*To calculate nutrition, I estimated one tablespoon of olive oil for shaping the crust.
**Use your favorite low sodium barbecue sauce. Ours is the recipe for Low Sodium Barbecue Sauce. If you use this recipe, you will end up with a bit of extra sauce, but we don’t mind since it keeps in the fridge for a few weeks. Mr. Spice also makes a Honey Barbecue Sauce, which you can try for this pizza if you prefer.
***Even though fresh mozzarella is fairly low in sodium (~85 mg per ounce), we prefer not to use it on this pizza because of its high moisture content. Instead, we use Kraft mozzarella which has 150 mg sodium per ounce. If you are looking to reduce sodium, you can either try fresh mozzarella or simply reduce the amount of Kraft mozzarella.
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