The Dessert Staple That Makes For Perfect Pizza Dough In A Pinch

Making your own pizza at home is an easy way to fully customize your dish with whatever toppings strike your fancy, as much or as little cheese as you desire, and any sauce of your choosing, all while avoiding delivery fees and carryout inconveniences. There are plenty of store-bought pizza crusts to get your process started, but if you find your freezer lacking in any actual pizza-specific crusts, fear not. The simplest way to get your homemade pizza back on track is by reaching for another store-bought staple. If you're well-stocked with store-bought pie crust, you're already part of the way to pizza perfection.

Albeit typically used for dessert applications, the qualities of most store-bought pie crusts are easily transferable to the medium of a pizza. People already call pizza a pie, so this dough swap isn't much of a stretch! With so many different types of pie crusts to choose from –- most of which can be purchased to keep in your fridge or freezer –- you can choose the right one to hold your favorite sauces, cheese, and toppings or even create fun-shaped pizza pockets or hand pies similar to a stromboli or calzone.

Looking at pie crust as just another kind of crust, you can let your choice of dough inform the style of your pizza or vice versa. For example, if you want to make a deep dish style pizza, opt for a deep dish pie crust and get extra saucy and cheesy with your filling and toppings. If you want to make a pizza on the lighter side, you can opt for a puff pastry or phyllo crust, which will accommodate less heavy-duty types of toppings. With these roll-out frozen crusts, you can also use cookie cutters to cut the dough down to smaller, individual sizes in fun shapes and let dinner guests customize their pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings before baking.

On the flip side, rather than making individual pizza pies, you can use store-bought pie crusts to accommodate larger pizzas in different styles. Grab a rectangular baking dish and press a rolled-out store-bought pie crust into the pan. From there, you can add sticks of string cheese and tightly roll the edges over to assemble a one-of-a-kind stuffed crust-style pizza. Try divvying up your pizza into quadrants and adding different sauces, cheeses, and toppings in each area to sample different combos. When it comes to homemade pizza, the more creativity, the better.