What Are Other Potential Pizza Toppings?

Name: Stuffed Crust Pizza
Prep time: 15 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 8
Ingredients: 1 can (13.8 oz) refrigerated Pillsbury™ Classic Crust Pizza Crust; 7 sticks (1 oz each) string cheese; 1/2 cup pizza sauce; 24 slices pepperoni (from 3.5-oz package); 2 cups shredded Italian cheese blend (8 oz)

Stuffed Crust Pizza

Prep time:15 min
Total time:35 min
Ingredients:5
Servings:8
Calories per serving:370

By Pillsbury Kitchens(Opens in a new tab)Updated 06/27/2024

Stuffed Crust Pizza

Prep time:15 min
Total time:35 min
Ingredients:5
Servings:8
Calories per serving:370

Satisfy your cravings for comfort food by diving into the gooey goodness of a stuffed crust pizza. Is there anything more pleasurable to eat than a warm, cheesy, mouthwatering slice of pizza? There is if it’s extra cheesy! Made with Pillsbury pizza crust dough and cheese sticks, it's the best of both convenience and simplicity rolled into one.

Stuffed crust pizzas go the extra mile, by filling the edge with added soft mozzarella cheese sticks. The beauty of this recipe lies in how fast and easy you can get it on the table and in your mouth! Does it sound complicated? It isn’t in the least! The pizza crust dough is wrapped around cheese sticks to cleverly form the stuffed crust. Then top your pizza as usual and bake for a pure slice of heaven in about 30 minutes. What a joy it is to bite into the indulgent, cheesiness of the tender crust along with the delectable toppings. The anticipation of eating that cheesy goodness might just make you eat your slices backwards starting with that irresistible crust edge first.

We made this recipe classic pepperoni, for a super-simple meal everyone will love. One of the greatest things about making pizza at home, is how you can adjust the taste to your family’s liking just by changing the toppings. Feel free to make it your own, whether you're a fan of garden-fresh veggies, crave more meats, or wish to experiment with unconventional sauces or toppings like sauerkraut or pickles – the choices are endless!

Keep a can of Pillsbury™ pizza crust on hand, along with shredded cheese and toppings, so you can pop this easy pizza in the oven in minutes. It’s perfect for those days when you don’t know what to make for dinner, the kids have the hangries after school, or you’re craving pizza while binge-watching your favorite show.

What Cheese is Used to Stuff Pizza Crust?

We use pre-packaged string cheese products to make the stuffed crust pizza recipe in minutes. Their size and shape work perfectly in a stuffed crust, and they cut down prep time by being ready-to-use. You can use whatever variety or flavor of string cheese sticks you like!

String cheese can vary in meltability—so the variety you choose can either be melty and oozey or hold its shape, but soften:

For the richest flavor and best melt, choose full-fat varieties that don’t say “low moisture” on the package. Fat adds flavor and moisture, to help the cheese to soften quickly (and melt) when heated. If you’re looking to trim a few calories from your pizza or want your cheese to hold its shape when the pizza is cut into, choose reduced-fat, low-fat, low moisture varieties.

Pair your string cheese flavor with the flavors of your pizza toppings, if you like, or use what you have on hand. Here are a few of our recommendations:

Mozzarella : Use mozzarella string cheese in the crust with your basic pepperoni, sausage or veggie pizza.

Cheddar: Use cheddar cheese sticks if you’re going for cheeseburger or taco pizza toppings.

Pepper Cheese: Try peppery cheese sticks on a spicy pizza with ingredients like sliced jalapenos and chorizo. Yum!

How To Stuff a Pizza Crust

Here’s the basic idea of how to make stuffed crust. Refer to the recipe and how-to step shots for the complete directions:

Press Out the Dough

On a pizza pan, press the pizza crust out (taken right from the refrigerator) until it’s overhanging at least 1 inch over the edge of the pan. It’s easiest if you use your fingers, starting from the center of the dough, and working out, push the dough into a round shape. Working with cold dough will be much easier than if you’ve let it sit out on the counter and it's warmed up, you may notice it gets soft and sticky if that happens.

Arrange the Cheese Sticks

Unwrap and lay the cheese sticks evenly around the dough, just inside the edge of the pan. If you like, cut the cheese sticks into 2 or 3 pieces, to help space them evenly around the circle.

Wrapping the Cheese

Working your way around the pizza, wrap the dough snuggly over the cheese sticks, pinching the edge to the bottom of the crust. If it doesn’t want to stick together, use a wet finger to add bit of moisture as “glue”. It’s important to make sure all the cheese is snuggly inside the dough, so it doesn’t ooze out during baking.

How To Cook the Perfect Pizza

If you think the best way to enjoy pizza is by consulting a takeout menu and picking up the phone, think again. The freshest pizzas are made right in your kitchen, are simple and convenient to make, and taste delicious! We’ll show you how to get the best pizza with stuffed crust, without having to become a professional Italian pizza thrower:

The Basics: Most pizza connoisseurs focus on the toppings—thinking if their toppings are delicious, then the pizza will be too. They’re not wrong…however, that’s a lot of pressure to perform, on the topping’s part! But we feel that equal consideration should go to the crust, because without a great crust, the pizza can never have 5-star flavor.

Short of making your own scratch crust with yeast, which takes a lot of time to rise and knead, the next best thing (and most convenient when you’re dying for a delicious slice of pizza) is to start with Pillsbury pizza crust. Our classic crust is the perfect middle ground between a thin, crispy crust and a pillowy, bread-like deep-dish crust. It’s not too thick or too thin—which works perfectly when making a cheese crust pizza, like this one.

You can dial in the texture of this crust even more to your liking, by the type of pizza pan you use:

Crispier Crusts: Choose a pizza pan with holes and/or made with a dark finish. Holes in the pan allow the hot oven air to reach the pizza crust while moisture in the crust can escape, making a crispier crust. A dark finished pizza pan absorbs more heat which will also help make the pizza crust crispier as it bakes.

Softer Crusts: Choose a pizza pan with a shiny finish and without holes. A shiny pizza pan reflects the heat away from the dough. Without holes in the pan, the dough stays moist by trapping moisture in the dough.

Topping Strategies: The key to getting the ideal orchestration of the perfectly baked crust, melty cheese and tender toppings lies in the amount of toppings you use. A good school of thought to keep in mind is that more doesn’t necessarily mean better. If your pizza is swimming in sauce or overloaded with toppings, it will be harder to get the crust done and cheese melted without overbaking the crust.

Traditionally, the order of ingredients is sauce, cheese and then toppings. The cheese acts as glue, holding the toppings on the pizza as it softens and melts. Start with a large spoonful of sauce in the middle of the pizza and using the back of the spoon, work in circular motions outwards, until you've covered the dough evenly up to the cheese-stuffed edge. Sprinkle a generous helping of cheese over the sauce and arrange your toppings on top.

Baked Perfection: When checking to see if your pizza is done, time, crust color, and cheese meltiness are what to look for. Start with the minimum bake time. Check your pizza. Is the crust edge deep golden brown? Is the cheese in the center melted? If the answer is no to either of these, add a minute or two more of bake time and check again. Once you’ve achieved both the right color of the crust and the cheese is melted, your pizza is done baking and ready to devour!

Storing Leftover Pizza with Stuffed Crust

As with any pizza, for the best textures of the crust and toppings, it’s best to enjoy this pizza freshly baked. It’s quick to get into the oven and the baked pizza will have the perfect trifecta of crust texture, melty cheese, and baked fillings. Here are our recommendations for storage.

Refrigerate Leftovers: Promptly place leftover slices on a plate, cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days.

Make Ahead: You can prepare the pizza through Step 3; cover and refrigerate for up to 2 hours. To bake, remove the plastic wrap and add a minute or two of extra bake time to account for the cold pizza.

Freezer Storage: It is not recommended to freeze this pizza whether it's unbaked or baked. The texture of the crust and toppings will not be ideal.

Reheating Your Pepperoni Stuffed Crust Pizza

Reheating cheese stick pizza crust (or any pizza for that matter) is tricky because there are several components all requiring different kinds of heat to return them to their best textures. For this reason, we try to serve pizza fresh, but if you happen to have leftovers, here are our recommendations:

Microwave Heating: In our estimation, this is the best way to reheat our leftover stuffed crust pizza. It’s quick and doesn’t require turning on an oven and waiting. Place a piece of pizza on a microwavable plate. Cover loosely and microwave it on medium-high (70%) 30 seconds to 1 minute or just until the toppings are warmed, and the cheese begins to melt. You’ll want to enjoy the warmed pizza before it has a chance to cool again—which happens quickly with microwaved food. If overheated, the crust will get tough, and the cheese will ooze out of the crust.

Oven Heating: While the texture of the crust may be better when baked in the oven, we don’t recommend this method, as the toppings can dry out while reheating, making the pizza dry to eat. It also takes longer for the oven to come to temperature when just heating a slice or two, so we don’t think it is worth the time.

Do you love to reheat pizza in your air fryer or toaster oven? If so, let us know in the comments how you make it to taste like it was baked fresh!

More About This Recipe

The Best Way to Make Pizza

If you think the best way to make a pizza is by consulting a takeout menu and picking up the phone, then think again. The best pizzas are made rustic style, and they taste delicious.

What's the best way to make a pizza? Millions of Italians agree that great results rely on a brick-built pizza oven. However, we don't all have the funds, time or space to install one of those bad boys in our homes, so what can the rest of us do?

The perfect pizza has a crispy base and a perfectly cooked and melted topping. There are simple ways to achieve this at home in your own kitchen.

The Basics

While most of us focus on the toppings as what makes a pizza so delicious, the key is really in the base. If you don't have time to make your dough from scratch, use a packet of bread mix where all the exact measuring has been done for you – or Pillsbury refrigerated pizza crust.

If you can't find a pizza dough bread mix specifically, then a ciabatta bread mix works just as well. Using a bread mix takes the strain out of the whole affair while still giving knock-out results — and giving you the pleasure of kneading that lovely dough.

If you want to make your own dough, try our Basic Pizza Crust recipe.

Getting Saucy

The topping ingredients are entirely of your choosing, but the basic order when creating your masterpiece should be sauce, cheese, and toppings — in that order. Start with a ladle of sauce in the middle of the pizza, and using the back of a spoon work in circular motions outwards, until you've covered the dough evenly. Sprinkle over a generous helping of cheese and arrange your toppings over the top.

Check out this recipe for Easy Homemade Pizza Sauce.

Creating a Perfect Bottom

The biggest dilemma for the home chef when making pizza is how to get the base crispy and the topping cooked through and melted at the same time. Often the topping may be cooked but the base is soggy—ugh. Or the base is overcooked and singed as you wait for the cheese to melt. So how do you get them both to cook evenly? There are three methods you can try.

Pizza Stone - These are inexpensive large round stones that you preheat in your oven for the pizza to cook on top. The beauty of them is that they cook the base evenly, and take the moisture out of the dough to make it crispy, too. It's as close to a pizza oven experience as you're going to get in the kitchen.
Pizza Tin - These are round, shallow tins with holes in the bottom that act to crisp up the base by letting moisture escape. They are cheap as chips, and produce good results but not in the same league as the pizza stone. They also can be difficult to clean.
Frying Pan - One celebrity chef came up with the solution of crisping up the base using a frying pan, and then switching the whole thing to a regular grill to cook the topping—ingenious but not authentic.

So what's the best way to make a pizza crispy on the bottom and deliciously melty on top? The pizza stone gives as close to authentic results as you're going to get, but you have to make sure your oven is hot, hot, hot. However, if you don't have a pizza stone, the other two methods work well, too.

Toppings

Here are a few easy pizza recipes that feature fun toppings:

Pesto Chicken Pizzas
Hawaiian Pizza (http://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/easy-hawaiian-pizza-recipe/2/)
Stuffed Crust Pizza with Pepperoni

If you have any more tips on getting a crispy pizza base, let us know below!

Frequently Asked Questions

You can switch up the toppings for what you like, on this versatile stuffed crust pizza. Or try any of these top-rated pizza recipes using Pillsbury pizza crust, for inspiration or to satisfy your pizza cravings:

Veggie Pizza: This is perfect as an appetizer or cut it into larger pieces on a hot summer day. The “sauce” is like cold and creamy veggie dip, and it’s topped with fresh, crispy veggies for a delicious change of pace.

BBQ Chicken Pizza: This amazing pizza tastes just like a flatbread from your favorite bar. Sauce with your favorite barbecue sauce, chicken, mozzarella cheese, red onions and cilantro give this pizza an upscale flavor.

Easy Mexican Pizza: Made with Old El Paso™ refried beans, red enchilada sauce and Mexican cheese blend, this pizza will be quite a delicious surprise when you serve it up on taco night!

Philly Cheesesteak Pizza: Turn deli roast beef, shredded provolone and green bell pepper into the tastiest pizza this side of Philadelphia!

Chicken Avocado Pizza: What a knockout combination—garlic alfredo pasta sauce, your leftover cooked chicken, mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes and avocado. Yum!

Or check out any of our scrumptious pizza recipes in our fantastic collection. You could have a different pizza every week!

Stuffed Crust Pizza

Prep time:15 min
Total time:35 min
Ingredients:5
Servings:8
Calories per serving:370

Ingredient

1 can (13.8 oz) refrigerated Pillsbury™ Classic Crust Pizza Crust
7 sticks (1 oz each) string cheese
1/2 cup pizza sauce
24 slices pepperoni (from 3.5-oz package)
2 cups shredded Italian cheese blend (8 oz)

Instructions

Step 1
Heat oven to 425°F. Grease 12-inch pizza pan with shortening or cooking spray. Unroll dough; place in pan. Starting at center, press out dough to edge of pan, pressing up and extending over sides by at least 1 inch.

Step 2
Place string cheese around inside edge of crust. Fold extended edge of dough over cheese; pinch firmly to seal.

Step 3
Add sauce to middle of dough. Using the back of a spoon, work in a circular motion outward until the dough is evenly covered. Top with pepperoni and sprinkle over cheese blend.

Step 4
Bake 12 to 16 minutes or until crust is deep golden brown and cheese in center is melted. Cut into wedges using a pizza cutter.

Recipe Tips

Add additional flavor to the baked crust edge by brushing it with a little softened or melted butter right after it comes out of the oven and sprinkling it with grated Parmesan cheese.
For a crispier crust, bake crust (before topping) 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are light golden brown, then add toppings; bake pizza 12 to 16 minutes.

Nutrition Facts

Calories
370
Total Fat
20g
Protein
20g
Total Carbohydrate
27g
Sugars
5g

Servings: 8

Serving Size: 1 Serving

Amount Per Serving Calories : 370

Nutrition Facts
Food Component / Nutrient	Amount	% , Daily Value*
Total Fat	20g	31%
Saturated Fat	11g	53%
Trans Fat	0g	% Value Not Available
Monounsaturated Fat	7g	% Value Not Available
Polyunsaturated Fat	1g	% Value Not Available
Omega-3	0g	% Value Not Available
Cholesterol	60mg	19%
Sodium	1050mg	44%
Total Carbohydrate	27g	9%
Dietary Fiber	0g	0%
Soluble Fiber	0g	% Value Not Available
Insoluble Fiber	0g	% Value Not Available
Sugars	5g	% Value Not Available
Protein	20g	% Value Not Available
Vitamin D	Value Not Available	0%
Calcium	Value Not Available	35%
Iron	Value Not Available	10%
Potassium	200mg	6%
Vitamin A	Value Not Available	8%
Vitamin C	Value Not Available	0%
Vitamin E	Value Not Available	0%
Thiamin	Value Not Available	8%
Riboflavin	Value Not Available	10%
Niacin	Value Not Available	4%
Vitamin B6	Value Not Available	6%
Folic Acid	Value Not Available	0%
Vitamin B12	Value Not Available	15%
Pantothenic Acid	Value Not Available	0%
Phosphorus	Value Not Available	30%
Magnesium	Value Not Available	4%
Zinc	Value Not Available	15%
Manganese	Value Not Available	4%
Selenium	Value Not Available	15%
Copper	Value Not Available	0%
Beta-Carotene	Value Not Available	% Value Not Available
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Exchanges

Starch 1&½,
Fruit 0,
Other Carbohydrate ½,
Skim Milk 0,
Low-Fat Milk 0,
Milk 0,
Vegetable 0,
Very Lean Meat 0,
Lean Meat 0,
Medium-Fat Meat 0,
High-Fat Meat 2,
Fat ½,
Fruits 0c,
Vegetables 0c,
Grains 0oz-eq,
Meat & Beans 1oz-eq,
Dairy 1&½c,
Fats & Oils 0tsp

Carbohydrate Choice

Carbohydrate Choice2

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What Cheese is Used to Stuff Pizza Crust?

String cheese can vary in meltability—so the variety you choose can either be melty and oozey or hold its shape, but soften:

Pair your string cheese flavor with the flavors of your pizza toppings, if you like, or use what you have on hand. Here are a few of our recommendations:

Mozzarella : Use mozzarella string cheese in the crust with your basic pepperoni, sausage or veggie pizza.

Cheddar: Use cheddar cheese sticks if you’re going for cheeseburger or taco pizza toppings.

Pepper Cheese: Try peppery cheese sticks on a spicy pizza with ingredients like sliced jalapenos and chorizo. Yum!

How To Stuff a Pizza Crust

Here’s the basic idea of how to make stuffed crust. Refer to the recipe and how-to step shots for the complete directions: