What's better for breakfast than this thin crust breakfast pizza with a cheesy béchamel sauce topped with thinly sliced potatoes, lots of cheese, bacon bits, and a fried egg on top.
Hi hi hi! I am so excited to share this breakfast pizza recipe with you. I made so many versions of this recipe to test different sauces and cheeses while perfecting it and I am just so, so pleased with the final version.
If you love breakfast and you love pizza, this is the pizza for you.
Béchamel is a smooth and creamy white sauce, one of the French "mother sauces," but since this one is for a pizza I added parmesan cheese to it. Tthere's no such thing as too much cheese on a pizza.
The fingerling potatoes are thinly sliced and get crisped up in the bacon fat after you cook the bacon. Then, to really send this over the top, I cracked an egg right on top of the pizza halfway through cooking.
Cracking the egg over the top is a bit tricky to pull off, but I have faith in you! You can do this.
If you get nervous, crack the egg into a cup first so it's easy to tip it onto the hot pizza.
The thinly sliced scallions added at the end, imo, are not optional — they add a nice bright crunch that is just so satisfying.
If you love salty bacon on pizza, but want something a little more lunch and dinner appropriate, you may like my arugula and prosciutto pizza, which is topped with gorgeously crisp prosciutto!
make your pizza dough in advance
One of the mistakes people often make when they want to make pizza for dinner is that they try to make the dough and the pizza on the same night.
Ever since I picked up my baking steel a few months ago, I've been making pizza, oh, I'd say about 3 times per week. With a baking steel, pizza only takes about 5-7 minutes to cook, so having the dough ready to go in advance makes pizza one of the fastest dinners you can make.
With a little bit of practice, hand stretching pizza dough takes less than a minute and will give you perfectly round, thin and crispy pizzas with bubbly crusts.
My favorite pizza doughs are those with long rising times because you can make them in advance and have them ready in the fridge for dinner. Having the dough already made is especially important for a pizza like a breakfast pizza which has more components that need to be cooked before you assemble it.
You can use any thin crust pizza dough you like with this recipe but my favorites are my basic overnight thin crust pizza dough, Baking Steel's 72 hr fermented pizza dough which makes enough for 3-4 medium sized pizzas (I cut the recipe in half) and Joy Huang's sourdough discard pizza dough.
Roberta's a pizzeria in NYC and LA also has a great yeasted pizza dough recipe that the NYT adapted to use sourdough starter. If you use store-bought dough (which is usually sold in 1 lb packages) you'll want to divide it, shape it, and let it rest in the fridge before you stretch it.
Each of these recipes makes enough dough for multiple pizzas, and requires at least one overnight rest in the fridge.
I like them because they're very hands-off, so throwing the dough together is easy, and then it's ready to go in the fridge when I need it.
some notes on the perfect pizza
- This recipe makes enough béchamel sauce for 3-4 medium pizzas, but only enough toppings for 1 pizza. I did it this way because most of the pizza dough recipes I use make enough dough for 2-4 pizzas, but I don't always top them with the same stuff. Also, it's quite hard to make a small amount of sauce!
- This pizza cooks on a baking steel (use code TPK10 for 10% off!), which preheats on the top rack of the oven for an hour at 500F before use. The baking steel soaks up all that heat and gets scorching hot which helps replicate the 800F temps of a wood-fired pizza oven. You can also use a pizza stone or baking stone, but I've found that a baking steel gets much, much hotter and is much easier to clean. You can use any pizza dough on a baking steel, but if you aren't using a baking steel, follow the baking instructions that go with whatever dough recipe you are using.
- A tip I've picked up from the Baking Steel site is to store individual portions of pizza dough in 16 or 32 oz deli soup containers. This helps keep the gluten from relaxing too much before you're ready to stretch the dough and helps the dough keep a nice circular shape. If you use the 32 oz containers, the extra space gives the dough somewhere to go as it rises.
- To transfer the pizza into the oven I use a 50/50 blend of semolina flour and AP flour. The semolina flour is a slightly larger grain and works kind of like ball bearings, allowing the pizza to easily slide off the wooden peel and onto the steel.
- IMPORTANT: Before you slide the assembled pizza off the peel, give it a few shakes back and forth to make sure the dough hasn't stuck to the peel. If it has, gently pick up the stuck edge and dust some flour under it.
- Fried egg without a baking steel: Crack the egg on top of the pizza with 3-4 minutes left on your timer OR fry the egg in a separate pan.
breakfast pizza with a fried egg on top
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 portion overnight thin crust pizza dough (homemade or store bought)
- semolina flour (for sliding the pizza off the peel)
béchamel cheese sauce
- 2 tablespoon butter
- 3 tablespoon flour
- 1 cup milk
- ½ cup parmesan cheese
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon pepper
- pinch whole nutmeg
pizza toppings
- 3 strips bacon
- 8 fingerling potatoes (sliced on a diagonal ⅛" thin)
- ½ cup low-moisture mozzarella cheese (shredded)
- 1 scallion (thinly sliced)
- ⅛ cup parmesan cheese (microplaned)
- 1 egg
- pinch salt
- pinch freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
Make the toppings and sauce
- Cook bacon until crisp in a large skillet over medium to medium high heat. Remove bacon from pan to rest on a paper towel, and reduce heat to medium. Once cool, chop into ½" pieces. Cook thinly sliced potatoes in remaining bacon fat until crispy and cooked through, approximately 3 minutes per side. Remove from skillet.
- In a small saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. As soon as the butter has fully melted, add the flour and use a fork to stir until the mixture is thick, almost like a paste.
- Increase the heat to just below medium and slowly pour in the milk, stirring and whisking constantly with the fork to break up any lumps.
- Add in the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Stir to combine. Let simmer and thicken for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the parmesan cheese and stir until smooth and creamy. Remove from heat and set aside.
pizza assembly & baking
- An hour before you plan to bake your pizza, preheat a baking steel on the top rack of the oven for 1 hour at 500°F. Remove pizza dough from the refrigerator at least 60-90 minutes prior to stretching.
- Dust your counter with ¼-½ cup flour and plop your pizza dough down in the center. Dust the surface of the dough with flour. Pick the dough up in both hands with your fingertips and thumbs pointing down. The dough will begin to stretch toward the counter. Rotate the dough through your hands, letting the dough stretch downward as you go. Gravity will do most of the work as you stretch the dough, so be gentle and patient so you don't tear the dough. Adjust your grip so you're holding the thicker edge of the crust as it stretches.When the dough is about 7-8" across, lay it flat on your counter and slide your hands under it with your palms against the counter. Stretch the dough on the backs of your hands by lifting them and and gently stretching them apart, rotating the dough between each stretch. If the dough gets too thin or you're worried it's going to tear, you can also lay it flat on the counter, gently pick up an edge of the dough with both hands, and hold it just a few inches off the counter to control the stretch as the dough gets thinner.
- When your dough is about 12-16" across, dust a pizza peel with a generous 50/50 blend (approx ⅛ cup) of all purpose and semolina flour. (If you don't have a pizza peel, place a sheet of parchment paper on the back of a sheet pan.)Transfer the pizza dough to the pizza peel.
- Work quickly to assemble the toppings so the dough doesn't absorb the flour and stick to the peel. Use the back of a spoon to spread ¼ cup of the béchamel sauce, then arrange the potatoes in an even layer, followed by a layer of mozzarella cheese. Finish it with ⅔ of the chopped bacon.
- Launch the pizza into the oven on the baking steel and set a timer for 2 minutes. Crack an egg into a small cup or bowl. At 2 minutes, slide the pizza out, rotate it, and tip the egg onto the center of the pizza. Season with salt and pepper. Slide the pizza back in for another 2 minutes, turning on your oven's broiler setting if it has one. Check the egg after 2 minutes — if the egg white still seems undercooked on top, leave the pizza in the oven for an additional 1-2 minutes.
- Remove the finished pizza from the oven and top with remaining bacon bits and thinly sliced scallions. Slice and serve immediately.
RECIPE NOTES
- Baking Steel 72-hr fermented pizza dough
- Joy Huang's sourdough discard pizza dough
- Roberta's pizza dough (using sourdough)
- Baking Steel's secret to making a round pizza [video]
- IMPORTANT: Before you slide the assembled pizza off the peel, give it a few shakes back and forth to make sure the dough hasn't stuck to the peel. If it has, gently pick up the stuck edge and dust some flour under it.
- Fried egg without a baking steel: Crack the egg on top of the pizza with 3-4 minutes left on your timer OR fry the egg in a separate pan.
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