How To: Make Pizza Without Dough

Make Pizza Without Dough

I was getting kind of sick of ordering delivery pizza (this happens at least 2-3 times a month). It was time to put a spin on gourmet pizza, but I just didn't know what it would be. Without pizza dough or an oven that is capable of creating the perfect pizza crust (I don't have an oven that can go up to a 1000 degrees), I decided I would use potatoes instead. This recipe is elegant enough to serve at a dinner party, but easy enough that you can cook it within 5-15 minutes.

For 4 small, personal sized pizzas 4" in diameter, you will need:

  • 2 large potatoes peeled and cleaned
  • 4 teaspoons salt (to flavor the potatoes)

I'm doing four different flavor combinations here, and the measurements for each combination will top 4 small pizzas or 1 large pizza. See below and choose your favorite, or serve all four different flavors.

Cheese & pepperoni pizza:

  • 3/4 cup mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup marinara sauce
  • 10 slices of pepperoni (or as much as you like)
  • 7-8 leaves of fresh basil

Mushroom swiss and ham pizza:

  • 1/2 cup chopped ham
  • 1 cup cooked mushrooms
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 4 slices of swiss cheese

Shrimp scampi pizza:

  • 12 pieces of fresh shrimp peeled and deveined
  • 1/3 cup butter
  • 4 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 1/4 cup white wine (use something you'll drink)
  • 3 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
  • 1 tablespoon flour
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • salt and pepper to taste

Bleu cheese & arugula pizza:

  • 1 cup arugula
  • 1/2 cup blue cheese
  • 16 thinly sliced pieces of pear

Whew, so now that you have the recipe (this isn't strict at all, you can change the toppings to your liking or even add more of something, like extra cheese) we can get started. Below, a shot of all the toppings I'm using for my pizzas:

Start out with a large potato, and slice down both sides of the potato so that you get flat edges. This is so that you can anchor it onto this contraption. If you don't flatten out the bottom, it will be hard to hook it onto the cutter. The cutter can be bought here.

Shave the potato down by just spinning the handle in a circular motion.

What you'll get are these thin angel hair-like strips of potato. This will be used as the crust.

Heat a frying pan—I'm using a cast iron pan for a crispy crust, but you can use a regular one. When you start to see smoke coming off the pan you can place all the potatoes on top of the pan. Make sure to coat your pan with 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil or vegetable oil. Spread all the potato around evenly, but be careful NOT to burn your finger tips.

After about 5 minutes, season your potato with salt (sprinkle evenly around top) and then take some grated mozzarella cheese and layer it on top of the potato evenly. Leave a thin border. After the cheese melts, top the cheese with marinara. Usually marinara sauce coats the bottom layer, but this will just make the potatoes very soggy, and it's better if the cheese melts into the potatoes (you'll see why later). My pan measures about 8" in diameter, in case you were wondering how big my potato pizza is.

Don't follow any time guidelines for this pizza, you'll know you can take it off the griddle when you check the crust. If it's nice and golden brown (and crispy), you're done! Serve it on a round cake stand. To add color and flavor, you can also add 5-6 fresh basil leaves about 2-3 minutes before you serve it.

The crust should look like this:

I love how the stringy, melted texture of the mozzarella cheese blends in seamlessly with the angel hair potatoes. You almost can't tell which is which.

To make the shrimp scampi, melt the butter and heat olive oil. Add in the garlic and salt, and stir until the garlic is nicely toasted. Then you can add the white wine. To thicken the sauce, add 1 tablespoon flour, and then add the shrimp. You're done with the sauce when the shrimp turns pink and is nice and firm. The parsley can be added later when the pizza forms. Put this sauce aside. If you want, you can even add 1 teaspoon potato starch to the sauce—this will give it a very gooey and thick texture which can work nicely for the pizza.

Now there is really only one other thing to prep for the pizzas, which are the mushrooms. In a skillet, heat butter and olive oil. When it's nice and hot, throw all the sliced mushrooms into the pan. Stir until they turn brown, but don't salt it until it's all done (this will pull moisture out of the mushrooms, which will only make them soggy). Add garlic at the end and cook for another 1-2 minutes. The garlic is thrown in at the end to prevent it from burning and adding a bitter flavor to the mushrooms (mushrooms will take long to brown).

These little rounds measure about 4x4 inches, and you can get them at most kitchen utensil stores. They're great for when you need to shape something while it's cooking on a pan. The angel hair potatoes can get pretty unruly so these silicon rounds help mold it. Place the potatoes into each round on a heated skillet coated with olive or vegetable oil.

Blue cheese & arugula pizza below;

Top the bleu cheese with arugula and pear after the bleu cheese starts to melt.

For the shrimp scampi pizza, I added the sauce and then the chopped parsley. The shrimp was added a little later.

Thanks for reading. More next week!

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26 Comments

Fantastic Pictures and the food looks delicious, I'm going to try to make them all in a few days

Great idea. That potato slicer is awesome. Nice touch with the bottled beverage and straw—what is that? Lemonade with mint?

Wow! These look gorgeous... and delicious!

very well done :)

Such an honor to have you on our site. Your voice is so original.

Great share , :) thanks so much I am doing this for Sunday dinner

rosti potato pizza? very good idea.

mHMMM looks Delicious!!! :D

I have to say that when I first started reading your article, I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, thinking "yeah, right... potato for a pizza crust... no, thanks!"

but wow! You did an amazing job, they look fantastic, elegant, and I'm here drooling all over the keyboard...
thanks for teaching me a lesson on opening my own horizons! :-)

Wow, what an interesting concept! Making pizza without the dough!

I am Italian and I love pizza, but I cannot eat the dough, so thank you very much for the idea!!!

This is a fabulous idea for those of us on a diet.

Wow all looks wonderful i will try it..

there is no way the potato would cook long enough in any of these dishes. The potato in direct contact with the pan would of course, but anything else would be at best, soggy or worse, raw. This would work if you either flipped the potato - good luck with that - or you had a broiler to heat from above. And that's before you even put the toppings on.

I've just made it! It was Delicious! It was Perfect! :D I didn't buy the magic cutter... but I just simply grater and then mashed the juice from the potatoes! ^_^ Cheers and thanks for such a good Idea! :D

awesome, did you take a pic? post it to the corkboard!

Oh sorry... No I didn't... :( Maybe next time! But I would highly recommend trying these! They are Delicious. ^_^

These recipes look like they will be absolutely phenomenal. Can't wait to try them out and then serve them to friends and family. Thanks for the great directions and beautiful pictues.

It is like Latkes and pizza all at once. I wish I wasn't eating out tonight.

Is there anyway to make it without the green gadget?

As I have said " I didn't buy the magic cutter... but I just simply grater and then mashed the juice from the potatoes" :D ^_^ It didn't look 100% like those... but it worked and it was delicious :D

Oh, I missed that. sorry I did read through all the comments before posting, but obviously not closely enough. what do you mean by "mashed the juice from the potatoes"?

hhehe no worries mate ^^ Because the potatoes had so much "juice" or liquid stuff xD so I took the potatostrips and sqeezed out the potato juice :) or else it would be a soup xD but use way more potatoes than the recipe says or else they will be really small :) Cheers ^^

I saw this article maybe 30 minutes ago. I just made and devoured a cheap version of this "hash brown pizza" with some golden yukons. Thanks so much!

This works fairly well with a grater instead of the potato tool. And I second the comment on squeezing out the shreds of potato before using them.

where did those unique glasses come from???

I cannot wait to try this.

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