Simple Create Your Own Pizza

Simple Create Your Own Pizza

Are you looking for a way to change up your at home meals with your kids. I keep repeatedly forgetting about our simple create your own pizzas, remembering again, surprising the kids with it, and then forgetting for awhile once again. I personally prefer how the pizzas taste when I make an entire one at once, but when I pull this idea out my kids’ faces light up. In fact, this reminds me I should probably do this again sometime soon.

Pinterest image showing several simple photos of pizza. Specifically spreading ranch on personal pizza crust, watching the oven, and some finished baked pizzas. The image also shows the post title and my main blog url.

Some of the common quotes I've heard when the kids make their own pizzas include:

My brain is making up the directions and recipes! -Ada
I’m using a flock of tomato sauce all over the pepperoni. (Ada) Me too! (Zoey)
I’m following my brain’s directions! -Ada

Several years ago, when I was making pizzas for supper, I decided to double my pizza dough recipe and, while we ate our finished pizzas, I baked several smaller sized personal pizza crusts to save for later. I was able to easily freeze the crusts individually on a cookie sheet in my freezer and then once frozen moved them to a sealed bag. The bag was simple enough to pull out the day before I wanted them so the pizza crusts could defrost overnight in the fridge and then I simply laid them out on a cookie sheet so the kids could decorate them. I was then able to toss the completed pizzas into a preheated oven without having to move them around. This time I didn’t have any tomato sauce on hand so I instead squirted some bottled ranch salad dressing onto each pizza crust and gave Ada a spoon to spread it out while I brought her a plate filled with individual pizza toppings. If you’re doing this with a toddler or someone who might lick their fingers I highly recommend working with ingredients that are either precooked or good to eat as is rather than anything raw.

Closeup of Ada spreading ranch dressing on her pizza crust with a spoon. Underneath the two pizza crusts are a silpat and cookie sheet.
Start with your pizza crust and spread out your choice of sauce. I’ve used tomato sauce, ranch salad dressing, or Alfredo sauce before.
While Ada still spreads the ranch dressing on the pizzas on the cookie sheet there's a plate of toppings in the background with grated cheese, pineapple, pepperoni, and ham sandwich meat.
I then placed a plateful of toppings beside the pizza so she could decorate it herself.
Closeup of the final two pizzas on the silpat lined cookie sheets.
The final pizzas before going into the oven.
The one pizza sits on an orange plate and the edge is slightly lifted up by two toddler hands. The pizza between the two hands has a little nibble already stolen off. In the background the other pizza sits on the plate that used to house the toppings.
The final melty ooey gooey pizzas warmed just enough to melt but not be too hot for her to eat.
The orange plate in the foreground is now naked with bites taken around the outside. Behind the plate is another, pink sectioned, plate with the meat toppings filling one of the smaller sections. Ada leans over to take a bite of the other crust.
In this case I had hoped decorating the pizza itself would mean she’d eat all the chosen toppings and had gotten excited when she had used them all. Alas this time the topping that she didn’t like went into a section of the plate so she could better eat the cheese and ranch-coated crusts.

If you don’t have small homemade personal sized pizza crusts on hand it doesn’t matter as you can easily use something else. I vaguely remember my mom using a large halved loaf of french bread before and although the bread to topping ratio is much different it still worked out. One of my default lunches for the kids are Nutella banana wraps so more often than not I may have an opened bag of tortilla wraps hanging around our kitchen that I can easily grab from so my simple choice of pizza crusts are the flour tortillas.

Ada on her knees in front of the lit up oven entranced at the contents inside.
This time around Ada again used all of the decorations on her pizza and then stayed at the oven door watching it all melt…
View from behind Zoey as she eats the leftover cheese and pineapple from her plate of pizza toppings.
while Zoey instead used a portion of her toppings and waited out her pizza baking by eating the leftover toppings that didn’t make it onto her tortilla wrap pizza crust.
View of the cookie sheet with an orange silpat liner over the entire surface and a green half sized one on the left side.
Since I wasn’t sure if the kids would be done decorating their pizza at the same time I gave a small Silpat™ liner to one kid and a large liner to the other so I was able to pull the one pizza to the side and put both on the same cookie sheet when they were both ready for the oven at the same time.

The tortilla wraps can be used for pizzas when you’re looking for a simpler meal too. This time around I batch baked them, although I can’t remember why at this moment, by laying out the flour tortilla wraps on two Silpat™ lined cookie sheets. I was able to get three whole tortillas on each sheet, with the edges turned up, and then cut a final tortilla wrap into quarters to fit the last two corners on either sheet. After I poured some tomato sauce on each tortilla wrap and then used a spoon to spread it out I next added some cut up ham deli meat, canned pineapple chunks, and two types of grated cheese.

Closeup of the two cookie sheets with the tomato sauce covered flour tortillas.
I tried to fit as many flour tortillas as I could onto the two cookie sheets by slightly overlapping them and cutting the final tortilla wrap into four pieces to cover the last few small spaces.
Closeup of a half stack of deli meat sitting on a marbled square cutting board with a knife next to it.
To made cutting up the Costo deli meat easier by plopping the entire stack on the cutting board and cutting strips from it starting at the one side and making my way to the center until I had enough for the pizzas. I then wrapped up the leftovers and put it back in the fridge for later.
Closeup view of the cookie sheets, angled from the side, showing them with tomato sauce and strips of deli meat on top.
I sprinkled the meat strips onto the tortilla wraps.
Closeup of a white bowl with a spoon, inside it, sitting in yellow liquid with the odd floating chunk of pineapple. Behind the bowl is the opened and emptied can of pineapple chunks and behind both are the blurred out pizzas from before now also topped with the pineapple chunks.
I next dumped a can of pineapple chunks into a bowl and used a slotted spoon to move the pineapple onto the pizzas.
View angled from above of the two cookie sheets with tortilla wraps topped with tomato sauce, deli meat, pineapple chunks, and mixed grated cheese.
Finally I topped the pizza with grated cheese. Normally I just use sharp cheddar cheese since I make sure to keep some on hand but this time I must have also had some mozzarella in the fridge.
Image of a personal pizza topped with melted cheese and other toppings sitting on a white plate on a wooden table.
Fresh out of the oven a melty yummy tortilla wrap personal pizza.

Making the pizzas are simple and a great sensory activity for your kids if you want to turn mealtime into a longer fun activity. It’s a perfect way to combine mealtime with playtime when you’re not in a rush which seems to happen so much more frequently now that we’re sheltering in place. Have you had your kids make personal pizzas themselves? What did you include on top? What did you use for the crust? Any tips and tricks that you recommend? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below. If you’re interested in getting updated on any of my future posts, currently once a week on Wednesdays, I share the updates to my Facebook page and Instagram account; although, you are also more than welcome to join my email list located right under the search bar or underneath this post. I hope your day is going good and you have a blast with your kids making pizzas if you decide to do this. Have a great week!



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