Heart shaped pizza bites for Valentines’ day: how to get the right shoe every time (and the one mistake to avoid!)
Super easy heart shaped pizza bites: mini pizza appetizers for Valentine’s Day for a cute and fun Valentine party!
I make pizza for my family every Friday so I thought for Valentine’s Day it would be cute to give my usual pizza presentation a bit of a romantic makeover and make hart shaped pizza bites!
The idea was simple to such an extent I thought I wouldn’t share it on the blog but once I went to actually make my heart pizza bites I quickly realised something: they are very easy to get wrong!
But I have good news: while the first batch I made resulted in an absolutely pitiful, hardly recognisable hearts, the alternative way I found to make them was not just effective, but also EASIER to make. This was vey much one of those cases where there was no need to complicate things.
So, here we go, my tried and tested, error proof way to make pizza shaped bites for Valentine day: an easy and cute Valentine’s Day appetizer idea!
Ingredients
- 500 gr / 4 cups all purpose Flour
- 7gr (one standard sachet) of dried yeast
- 1 cup of lukewarm water – potentially more, as it depends on the specific flour you are using and even humidity level in the room.
- Pinch of salt
- Passata (tomato sauce, plain)
- Mozzarella
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Topping of choice
Tools
- Bowl to mix (I use a KitchenAid mixer but you can easily also do this with a wooden spoon and your hands
- Pizza Tray
- Heart shaped cookie cutter or just scissors
Method
In a large mixer bowl, pour your flour and yeast and mix well. Then slowly add your lukewarm water: add it SLOWLY to give the flour the chance to absorb it.
Mix well and add as much water as you need to get a dough that is not too sticky: you should be able to handle it without it sticking to your hands and the consistency should be smooth and elastic.
Let your dough to rest for about 30 mins to 1 hour, so that the yeast can make it rise.
now, this is where I made my original mistake. DO NOT shape your dough now! if you give your dough a hart shape when it is raw, there is a very high chance the shape will disappear once the heat of the oven makes the dough rise: if you are making a standard size pizza, this may not be an issue but on a bite size one it really is a problem as you’ll lose the shape almost entirely – I am going to show what I mean:
Do this instead.
You want to cook your pizza as normal first. So, once you have your dough, flatten it using a rolling pin. Oil a pizza tray so that it doesn’t stick and place your pizza dough on it.
Use a spoon to spread your tomato sauce on it, then add a little bit oil olive oil on tops and put in a hot oven (220C / 420F) for about 20 mins. As the pizza is about halfway cooked, add the chopped mozzarella on top and let it cook until the pizza is fully done.
Now, use your cooking cutter to get your hearts and you’ll have a perfect result!
Top tip! If you want each of your pizza bites to have a bit of crust, do this: instead of one large pizza, make several small ones, only marginally larger than your cookie cutter. When adding the tomato sauce, make sure to do in such a way to leave a sauce-free crust around it so that when you cut it, you have a crusty border.
Heart Shaped Pizza Bites – Pin this!
