pizza bites

Several years ago I found this recipe for pizza bites and fell in love with it.  The recipe is a little time consuming but so worth it and it makes a lot so you can freeze them for later.  Or serve them at a party.  Michael and I made a batch tonight so I thought I would share.

Start with pizza dough – you can buy refrigerated dough or make your own (see how I make my pizza dough here).

cut up your pepperoni

and mozzarella cheese

divide the dough into small sections

fill each section of dough with cheese and pepperoni (or anything else you want inside your bites)

wrap the dough around the filling

put the bites in a pan and brush with an oil and seasoning mixture

sprinkle with parmesean

bake

enjoy

recipe (see original recipe here)

ingredients

• 2 batches of pizza dough (we double our homemade whole wheat pizza dough recipe found here)
• 4 oz pepperoni (we use turkey pepperoni)
• 16 oz mozzarella cheese (the original recipe calls for 8 oz of cheese but we like lots of cheese so we use a 16 oz block)
• pizza sauce for dipping
• 1 tsp garlic
• 1 tsp oregeno
• 1 tsp parsley
• 1 tsp basil
• crushed red pepper to taste
• approx 2 Tbsp oil (we use canola oil)
• approx 3 Tbsp parmesan cheese
• (you can also use any other pizza toppings as filling: peppers, onions, olives, etc.)

instructions

Make 2 batches of pizza dough (or buy 2 cans of refrigerated dough); separate into 48 sections.  Chop the pepperoni (we chop ours into fourths).  Cut the cheese into 48 cubes.  Flatten each little dough ball and put the fillings in the middle (one cube of cheese, pepperoni, anything else you want) and then pull the dough up around the filling to create a little ball.  Put 16 balls in each pan (this will make 3 pans – I usually bake one and freeze the other two for later; if you are making these for a party you can just bake them all at once).  Combine all the spices with the oil and brush over the tops of the bites, then sprinkle them with parmesan.  Bake at 400 for 15 minutes.  Serve with pizza sauce for dipping.

Each bite is 90 calories.  This meal would be for South Beach phase 2 occasionally (it’s a lot of bread for phase 2) or phase 3.

Earlier I said this was time consuming – the most time consuming part in the past was making the dough.  If you buy pre-made dough or if you have a stand mixer and can make your dough in that, it cuts down on the amount of time considerably.