Love Christmas food? Love pizza? Then you are going to love this Christmas Pizza – all the flavours of a Christmas dinner in pizza form! Better still this festive pizza is super easy to make and takes just 35 minutes.
All the flavours of a Christmas dinner… in pizza form!
If you love Christmas dinner and you love pizza, the you are going to LOVE this Christmas Dinner Pizza!
It features all the best bits of a Christmas dinner:
- Turkey
- Bacon and sausage, to give you the flavour of pigs in blankets
- Sage, onion and sausage, to give you the flavour of sage and onion stuffing
- Plus, of course, passata, mozzarella and oregano for that essential pizza taste
All on top of my quick and easy, super thin pizza base!
Better still this festive pizza is super easy to make and takes just 35 minutes.
(I didn’t include roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, sprouts or gravy, because quite frankly, I think they would be weird on pizza. But feel free to add them if you really want to!)
How to make Christmas Pizza
This Christmas Dinner Pizza is so easy to make! All you need to do is make the quick and easy pizza bases, then top each pizza with a thin layer of passata. Next, scatter over the thinly sliced onions, cooked turkey, torn sausage meat, cooked lardons, and torn mozzarella, so each pizza is covered evenly with all the toppings. Then, scatter over the dried sage, dried oregano and black pepper.
Cook your pizzas in your pre-heated oven for 15-18 minutes. The pizzas are ready when the cheese is bubbling and the base is a light golden brown and crispy, not soggy.
(Full recipe given in the recipe card below.)
Can you make Christmas Pizza with leftovers?
I didn’t originally create this Christmas Pizza as a leftovers meal… I more had in mind something to have BEFORE Christmas… as a cheeky ‘foretaste’ of a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. (For all those, like me, who can’t wait for the 25th December for all those delicious Christmas dinner flavours!)
But you absolutely can make this Christmas Pizza with leftovers!
To make this Christmas Pizza with leftovers, follow the recipe below, but use leftover turkey, stuffing, pigs in blankets, ham… and anything else you have left over that’s suitable to go on a pizza.
Can you put cranberry sauce on Christmas Pizza?
Sure, if you want to! But I recommend dolloping on a little cranberry sauce AFTER your pizza comes out of the oven. Or, perhaps even better, serve the cranberry sauce on the side… so people can add as much as they want.
Why do you need to fry the bacon first?
You’ll notice in the recipe card below that I recommend frying the diced bacon pieces / lardons first before putting them on the top of the pizza. This is for 2 reasons…
Firstly, if you put raw lardons on your pizza they just don’t crisp up / brown properly in the oven.
And secondly, it allows you to drain off some of the fat, so the bacon fat doesn’t make your pizza greasy.
Why don’t you also fry the sausage meat?
You may be wondering then, why I haven’t also recommended frying the sausage meat pieces too. The simple answer is, I experimented with this – trying both ways and I found no discernable difference between frying the sausage meat first and putting it on raw… And you know me, I am not going to suggest extra processes or effort unless it’s strictly necessary!
My not-so-secret ‘cheat’ to get a super thin pizza crust!
One of the big problems with homemade pizza, is that, if you make the pizza base in the normal way you’d make a white bread, kneading for 10 minutes and two 45 minute proves, you end up with a really thick ‘bready’ base. And I don’t know about you, but I like my pizza crust super thin and crispy!
My not-so-secret ‘cheat’ to get a super thin pizza crust is the quick knead, no prove method. All you need to do is mix together flour, yeast, water, salt and olive oil in a bowl. Then knead for just 5 minutes. Don’t prove AT ALL and get straight on with rolling out the pizza dough and making your pizzas.
By doing it this way, the pizza bases don’t rise at all – giving you that perfect super thin and crispy base.
Better still, it dramatically cuts down on preparation time – and effort!
What to serve with Christmas Pizza
This Christmas Pizza is a complete meal in its own right, so you don’t need to serve it with any sides, but if you want to, I suggest any (or all) of the following:
- Potato Salad
- Green Salad
- Couscous Salad
- Classic Coleslaw
- Rainbow Slaw
- Roasted Corn On The Cob
- Garlic Bread
Classic Coleslaw
What to drink with Christmas Pizza
This pizza goes well with easy-drinking, uncomplicated Italian reds like Chianti, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, and Primitivo.
Away from Italy, other good options are Sangiovese (the main grape variety in Chianti), Primitivo, Zinfandel (another name for Primitivo) and rustic Southern French reds.
What to do with leftover Christmas pizza?
If you end up with leftovers, this homemade pizza keeps very well in the fridge. Simply place the cooked and cooled pizza in an airtight container in the fridge, where it will keep for up to 3 days.
This pizza is delicious cold, straight from the fridge, but can also be reheated. To reheat, set your oven to 200C (180C fan / gas mark 6 / 400F) and place the cold pizza on a pizza tray / baking tray. Put it straight in the oven (don’t wait for the oven to warm up!) and cook for 5-10 minutes, or until it’s piping hot and the base has crisped up again.
I don’t recommend reheating pizza in the microwave (soggy base issues!)
(IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using leftovers on your pizza, do not reheat. Food safety guidelines state that food should not be reheated more than once.)
Can you freeze Christmas pizza?
You can – I’ll be honest, it’s not as good after freezing, but it’ll work!
Simply place the cooked and cooled pizza in an airtight container in the freezer, where it will keep for up to 1 month.
Defrost overnight in the fridge and reheat as above.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using leftovers on your pizza, do not reheat. Food safety guidelines state that food should not be reheated more than once.)
If you like this recipe…
…you might also like:
- Leftover Turkey Biryani
- Easy Turkey Fajitas
- Leftover Turkey Fried Rice
- Turkey Macaroni Cheese
- Easy Cheese and Tomato Pizza (Margherita Pizza)
- Peri Peri Chicken Pizza (Nando’s Inspired)
Easy Turkey Fajitas
Christmas Pizza
Ingredients
- 150 g lardons
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 7 g fast action yeast
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 350 ml lukewarm water (you may not need all of this, see below)
- 300 g passata (I use Cirio Passata Rustica)
- 1 red onion very thinly sliced
- 250 g cooked turkey cut into thin strips
- 250 g sausage meat (or raw sausage stuffing balls), torn into small pieces
- 250 g drained weight fresh mozzarella torn (or grated mozzarella or grated cheddar – see Note 1)
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 2 teaspoons dried sage
- Black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 220C / 200C fan. Grease 4 large (12inch / 30cm) pizza trays with a little olive oil. (Or 8 smaller ones – See Note 2.)
- Fry the lardons in a frying pan over a high heat for 3 minutes, or until just turning golden brown. (See Note 3.) Turn off the heat, drain off the fat and set aside until needed.
- Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix together the flour, yeast and salt, then add the olive oil and stir. Slowly add the water until the mixture comes together to form a dough – the dough should just come together and should not be too wet/sticky. (You may not need all the water. Start with 300ml and see how it goes, add it in little bits after that.)
- Knead the pizza dough for 5 minutes on a floured surface. (See Note 4.)
- Divide the dough up into 4 equal sized pieces (or 8 if you are making small ones) – I use my scales to make this easier and more accurate.
- Roll out each piece out to roughly the size of the pizza tray. Put the rolled out dough in the pizza tray and stretch out gently to the full size of the pizza tray (this is because it will shrink slightly when you pick it up).
- Top each pizza with 4 tablespoons passata. Spread the passata all over the base using the back of a spoon, leaving a thin border all around the pizza. (Don’t use too much passata or it will make your pizzas soggy.)
- Scatter over the thinly sliced onions, so each pizza is covered evenly with the onions.
- Next, scatter over the cooked turkey, so each pizza is covered evenly with the turkey.
- Then, scatter over the torn sausage meat, so each pizza is covered evenly with the little pieces of sausage.
- Next, scatter over the cooked lardons, so each pizza is covered evenly with lardons.
- Finally, scatter over the torn mozzarella, so each pizza is covered evenly with the cheese.
- Scatter over the dried sage, oregano and black pepper.
- Cook your pizzas in your pre-heated oven for 15-18 minutes. You may find you need to move the pizzas around in your oven so they cook evenly.
- The pizzas are ready when the cheese is bubbling and the base is a light golden brown and crispy, not soggy. (If you discover as you are cutting the pizza that the base is still a bit soggy, just pop it back in the pizza tray and back in the oven for a couple more minutes.)
Notes
- What cheese you use is up to you. You can use grated mozzarella, grated cheddar or torn fresh mozzarella. My personal preference here is torn fresh mozzarella. Please note 250g drained weight = 400g undrained.
- This recipe can also be used to make 8 smaller 7inch (18cm) pizzas. If you don’t have a pizza tray, use a baking tray or cake tin of a similar size instead.
- It’s important to fry the lardons before putting them on the pizza, as they just don’t crisp up / brown properly in the oven.
- The trick to getting a super thin crust is to only knead for 5 minutes and not prove the dough, so be careful not to leave the pizza dough to rest to long at any point or you will find the dough rises and you’ll have thick crust pizzas! LEARN MORE
- Suitable for freezing.
- Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.
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