Kids

The Keys to Pizza-Making with Kids, from a Pizza Night Pro

People ask me all the time if my kids are good eaters—if they eat everything I write about here and on my blog. The answer is NO. My kids are good-but-not-great eaters, happiest when I stick to what they know—grilled cheese, plain pasta, quesadillas, tacos—and wary of anything new. They like most fruit and eat a few vegetables without protest: boiled broccoli (with butter and salt), steamed green beans (with butter and salt), oven fries (salt!), and raw carrots with hummus (score!). Like their parents, more than anything, they love pizza.

Photo by Alexandra Stafford

They also love to help. Involving my children in the kitchen has not come as naturally as I would have thought. It has been surprisingly challenging, in fact, because it’s more work to involve them than to not. I’ve gotten a little better at it only because I now know what to expect: flour and batter and dough to fly out of mixing bowls, quibbles to arise at every step about who gets to do what and if it’s fair, surfaces (and hands!) to become stickier than ever, egg shells to land everywhere they are not wanted. It’s exhausting.

But because including the children in the cooking process brings them joy and occupies them at a time of day when restlessness peaks, I try to make it work, and pizza making, I've come to realize, is a relatively good activity for involving children. For one, the dough doesn’t contain too many ingredients, and it’s forgiving—if flour spills out of the bowl, it’s easy to add more. More to the point, there are no eggs! Also, the many and varied steps of pizza making—mixing the dough, shredding the cheese, stretching and saucing the dough, topping the rounds—keeps the kids engaged. It helps that all of the prep can be done away from a hot surface.

Before...and after Photo by Alexandra Stafford

Like many people, we’ve designated Friday as our pizza night, which has become an end-of-week ritual we all look forward to. A few weeks ago, when my son asked me on a Monday if it was Friday yet, and I said no, I was sure his next question was going to be: “How many more days till we can watch a movie?” When he said instead, “I can’t stop thinking about your pizza,” my heart swelled—music to this mother’s ears.

A Step-by-Step Guide

Mixing the dough: I measure the water and weigh the flour, and let the children do the rest: measure the salt and yeast, add the water, stir it together. If too much flour gets displaced in the mixing process, I add more, until the dough looks right.

Photo by Alexandra Stafford

Portioning the dough: I allow the children to dust my board with flour liberally, which they love, but I portion the dough and ball it up, while they sprinkle my hands with more flour and poke and pat the dough balls as often as they can before I move the board out of their reach.

Photo by Alexandra Stafford

Stretching the dough: My tool of choice for great pizza at home is the Baking Steel, but when I want to involve my children, I find it easier to use cast iron skillets. My two oldest children (ages 7 and 5) can stretch the dough out nicely with their hands in lightly oiled skillets. Despite constant reminders to work from the center out, to be gentle, and to go slowly, the dough often will tear or look unevenly stretched, but it always turns out fine in the end.

Photo by Alexandra Stafford

Topping the dough: My two oldest can sauce the dough just fine, though they need to be reminded every time that sauce need not be spread right up to the edge—leave a border! They all like to pull the balls of mozzarella into chunks, which is easier for them than using a grater (and preferable anyway). And they all participate in distributing the cheese over the sauced dough. Sauce and mozzarella are the only toppings they like at the moment, so it’s simple. Most of the year I use a jarred marinara sauce (Casa Visco, local to me), which the kids love.

My turn! Photo by Alexandra Stafford

Baking the pizza: My job for now—the kids can barely hold up a cast iron skillet, so having them transfer one to the oven makes me nervous—but while the pizza bakes, I give the kids other jobs: peel carrots, set the table, get out the grated parmesan, which they love to sprinkle over their baked pizzas, put hummus in a bowl, etc.

Conversations over a beaut like this are the most meaningful. Photo by Alexandra Stafford

Eating the pizza: On pizza Friday, kids eat first, adults second. Limited to baking two pizzas at a time, it’s easier for me to feed the kids first, then send them on their way. This increases the chances of my husband and me having a meaningful conversation tenfold, which is especially nice at the end of the week. Recently I’ve been topping our pizzas with crème fraîche, sautéed kale and mushrooms, and mozzarella.

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • Eugene Clark
    Eugene Clark
  • Fresh Tomatoes
    Fresh Tomatoes
  • Erin Callison
    Erin Callison
  • Mamasue
    Mamasue
  • Julie
    Julie
I write the blog alexandra's kitchen, a place for mostly simple, sometimes fussy, and always seasonal recipes. My cookbook, Bread Toast Crumbs is available everywhere books are sold.

9 Comments

Eugene C. May 16, 2020
I see you save 2 rounds for next day...could you freeze the dough and use another time? If so...ho would you do that?
 
Alexandra S. May 16, 2020
Yes, absolutely! After you ball up the dough, transfer each round to a quart (or other similarly sized) container. Immediately transfer to the freezer. Thaw for 1 day in the fridge or half a day at room temperature.
 
Fresh T. May 12, 2017
How how how do your pizzas always look so perfect?! These pizzas look delicious (all your pizzas do). I love making skillet pizza, but yours looks even better. I must try.
 
Erin C. May 12, 2017
Hey Alexandra! We have a regular cast iron and a rim-less cast iron. Do you think the rim-less would do okay? Having 2 pizzas in the oven at the same time would be awesome. Thanks so much!
 
Alexandra S. May 12, 2017
Rimless will be great! There is very little oil added to the skillet (a teaspoon at most), and it all gets absorbed by the dough, so there's no risk of oil spilling around your oven. Rimless is actually probably great here, because you'll get even better air circulation around the dough. You may want to check the pizzas before the 8 minutes — they might cook more quickly in the rimless pan.
 
Mamasue May 12, 2017
Alexandra I am loving your book, Bread Toast Crumb! Right now I am starting from the beginning making Peasant Bread and soon will be moving on to Pizza dough. I love using my cast iron skillet for pizza too but always have bought pizza dough. The Kale and Mushroom pizza sound great for me and Hubby can have his Pepperoni! Thank you to your Mom and you for this adventure into BTC. Fingers crossed that Food52 will choose your book for September's Food52 Cookbook Club. :-)
 
Alexandra S. May 12, 2017
Mamasue, I'm so happy to hear all of this!! Thank you so much for the kind words and wishes :) I think you are smart to start with the peasant bread. And I have no doubt you will find this just as easy. Happy baking!!
 
Julie May 11, 2017
The grown up pizza toppings are making me salivate!

I love the idea of using cast iron skillets for little pizzas! I have hope to finally have a circular shaped homemade pizza instead of all the goofy shapes I've been making! Hehe.
 
Alexandra S. May 11, 2017
Julie, the skillet really acts as a nice guide! Let me know if you have any questions. I've been loving this kale-mushroom combination—I've been using it in everything: tacos, enchiladas, quesadillas, pizza. So simple and good.