No Super Bowl Party is complete without PIZZA!! And this BBQ Chicken Pizza is sure to be a crowd pleaser. It is what I like to call "cheat cooking" because I bought already cooked chicken, already made BBQ sauce and pre-made dough. Which really just means this pizza is super easy to make but everyone will think you made it from scratch!
1 package pre-made pizza dough (I highly suggest the one from Trader Joe's)
3/4 cup BBQ sauce of your liking
1 package already cooked plain chicken breast (again, the one from Trader Joe's is pretty darn good)
1/2 red onion
1/4 cup loosely packed cilantro
1 large Avocado
4 large cloves of garlic
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
flour for dusting
olive oil for drizzling
[What to do]
First things first, preheat your oven to 450. While your oven is preheating, take your dough out of the fridge. It is really important that the dough sits out until it becomes room temperature before you try and pull it into a pizza shape. If it is still cold when you try and do this, it will just turn out disastrously and you'll end up resenting the pizza before you even get to eat it. It usually takes about 45 minutes or so just sitting on a counter before it becomes room temperature so you can pull it out and then preheat your oven and get all of your ingredients ready to go.
Next, slice your red onion into thin slices, coarsely chop your garlic, grate your cheese and wash and dry your cilantro. Open up the chicken and chop it into bite sized pieces. Pour about 1/2 the BBQ sauce onto it, cover it with a paper plate or paper towel and heat it up in the microwave for about 2.5 minutes or until hot.
Hopefully by this time your dough is at room temperature and you can start to assemble this thing. Since I don't have a pizza oven or pizza stone, I use a heavy duty baking sheet and a hot oven to cook my pizza. Lightly spray your pan with cooking spray and sprinkle a little flour on it so that the dough will not stick to the pan when you take it out of the plastic. Next, coat your hands in flour and take out the pizza dough, it will be sticky so you can flip it over onto your already prepared pan to give the dough a little coat of flour so it doesn't stick to your fingers.
Over the years I have completely given up on trying to make a round pizza because the dough never wants to make a circle so I usually just pull it out into the shape of a blob that slightly resembles a rectangle. The key to pulling out the pizza dough is to touch it as little as possible, the more you play with it, the harder it will get to make it do what you want. Just kind of pick it up from one end and let gravity do its thing and then lay it down on the pan and push it out towards the edges of the pan.
Once you have your dough on your pan, put the rest of the BBQ sauce on it as your "pizza sauce". Next put on your chicken, garlic, red onion, and top it off with the parmesan cheese. Now for the important part, drizzle some olive oil along the crust of your pizza, make sure it gets on the crust part and then it kinda drizzles onto the pan too. Don't be shy with the olive oil. You want your pizza crust to become crispy perfection! This will make your crust get crispy so you can actually pick up a piece of pizza and not have all the toppings fall off of a soggy crust.
Put it in the hot oven for about 10 minutes or until the crust turns a golden color and the cheese is all melted and bubbling. Now all you have to do is add your cilantro and avocado to the top of it and enjoy!