Homemade Nutella Pizza for Dessert (Pizza Steel Recipe)

Pizza night isn't complete without dessert, and this homemade Nutella pizza is the dessert your next pizza night needs. Just like a regular pizza, you can have a lot of fun personalizing this Nutella dessert pizza by adding your favorite dessert toppings! I can't wait to see what Nutella pizza topping combinations you come up with.

I first experienced the magic of a Nutella pizza ("Pizza Alla Nutella") at a high-end Italian restaurant called Zero Otto Nove back when I lived in New York City. I was in my early twenties and felt slightly awkward and out of place, playing at being a "real" grown-up, drinking a glass of wine with my friends at a fancy restaurant. Seeing something as seemingly unrefined as a Nutella pizza on the menu was such a novelty that we had to order it. And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

A Nutella pizza is exactly what it sounds like. A thin, crispy pizza crust, topped with gloriously melty Nutella and finished with a light dusting of powdered sugar. So simple, so elegant, so decadent, so fun. What a great way to end a meal.

When I make it at home, I bake the hand-stretched thin-crust pizza dough plain on a baking steel first, using a handy little ice cube trick to help it retain moisture so the crust stays perfectly crisp-yet-chewy.

Note: This post is not sponsored by Nutella. I am merely a fan! That said, if you work for Nutella, email me!

Notes From Recipe Testing

While the finished version of my Nutella pizza recipe is really quite simple, the recipe development process actually took me several months to perfect.

Nutella doesn't bake well at high temperatures, so you can't spread it on the pizza and bake it the way you do with a regular pizza. Figuring out the best way to bake plain pizza dough so that it retains the classic crisp-yet-chewy texture you expect was tricky!

I tried baking the dough topped with butter, Crisco, olive oil, a combination of butter and powdered sugar, spraying it with water, etc. None of them got the results I wanted, and the hot melted butter and oil sometimes pooled on top of the dough was a real hazard!

I also tested rolling out vs. hand stretching the dough, but it didn't make a difference which method I used; without something on top of the dough, the thinnest parts still baked up crunchy and crumbly — more like a cracker than pizza.

In the end, I found two things that made the biggest difference. One, it was important not to stretch the dough too thin. And, crucially, I borrowed a technique I've seen used to make this cacio e pepe pizza — a few ice cubes on the surface of the blank pizza dough to weigh it down and provide moisture while it bakes.

Every oven is different, so depending on the size of your ice cubes and the thickness of your pizza dough, it make take a couple of tries to get the timing of the ice cube technique down pat. But the good news is even if it doesn't work perfectly the first time, a thin layer of Nutella can hide a lot of problems!

I use my overnight thin-crust pizza dough recipe here, as usual. You can use any pizza dough you like, but you will get better results with a homemade pizza dough that has a long rise time because the gluten has more time to relax so it can be stretched to the right size.

You need 2-3 standard-sized ice cubes. I tried some other ice cube shapes and sizes, but the ones from this easy-release ice cube tray worked best for me. If your ice cubes are smaller, you may need more of them. I don't recommend using larger ice cubes for this pizza.

I use classic Nutella for this dessert pizza, but you can also use other hazelnut chocolate spreads like Bonne Maman's Chocolate Hazelnut Spread. You could even use chocolate tahini, chocolate hazelnut & almond butter, or, for a completely nut-free option, use plain chocolate spread instead.

How to Make Nutella Dessert Pizza

Pre-shaping before you stretch your pizza dough is key to getting a perfectly round pizzas. Read my guide to hand stretching pizza dough for more detail!

Even if you'd rather roll the pizza dough out with a rolling pin, I still recommend pre-shaping it and letting it rest overnight (or several hours) in the fridge beforehand to get a nice round shape with even thickness.

Unlike most pizza recipes, the dough for this Nutella pizza is baked without any sauce on top. Pizzas cook at a very high heat for a short amount of time, and without the moisture of a sauce on top, the thin crust in the center will dry out and become brittle like a cracker.

If you're using a bigger pizza dough ball, you can stretch it bigger than 10 inches across, in which case you'll likely need additional ice cubes; just try not to stretch the center too thin. If your dough ball is smaller, stretch it smaller than 10 inches, and you may only need one ice cube!

Once you take the pizza dough out of the oven, move quickly to add the Nutella, so the crust is still hot.

Yes, you can absolutely just dollop Nutella onto the surface of the pizza and spread it around. It's not like the Nutella pizza police are going to come into your kitchen and smack the spoon out of your hand. You do you! I personally just like the piping bag because it makes it easier to spread the Nutella evenly on the pizza crust.

While I normally cut a pizza into 8 slices, I've found the smaller size of this Nutella pizza lends itself better to four or six slices. But again, you do you!

Practical Tips and Recipe Notes

• Removing the ice cubes: If you don't want to take the pizza all the way out of the oven to tip the ice cubes off, you can simply lift the edge of the pizza dough and tip the ice cubes and excess water onto the baking steel. It's hot enough that they'll sizzle and steam immediately. I don't like doing it this way because sometimes the water gets trapped under the dough and if I haven't cleaned my steel recently enough, it blackens the bottom of the crust. But you do you!
• Using Store Bought Pizza Dough: Store-bought pizza dough has LOTS of yeast in it to help it stay active longer. I really don't recommend using store-bought dough as it's almost impossible to get a truly thin crust with it. It tends to bake up thicker so it will need an extra minute or two to bake.
• Measure Nutella with your heart: Nutella is sticky and thick and hard to measure neatly, which is why I weigh it. And yes, I've given a measurement for how much Nutella to use because I'm a recipe writer and I have to. But a lot of times when I'm making Nutella pizza for myself, I measure with my heart, by which I mean I eyeball the amount of Nutella in the piping bag, spreading it out and dolloping on more directly out of the jar until my Nutella-loving heart is happy. You should absolutely feel free to do the same.

📖 Recipe