Air Fryer Pizza Dough Balls. If you love deep fried Pizza Express Dough Balls then you will love my air fryer version. Learn exactly how to make pizza dough balls in the air fryer. Pizza dough balls is an update of my feta cheese dough balls recipe that I originally published on the blog back in 2016. It is one of those recipes that my readers have asked me time and time again to convert to a pizza express copycat and here it is! The original recipe was true to a blogging working mum, that when we are pregnant and having a baby, we test lots of recipes in advance and then load them onto the blog. That way we are not having gaps on the blog when our baby is born. The original version of my pizza dough balls is an example of this as it went out exactly to the day that my wonderful baby boy Jorge was born. It just feels really cheesy that a post that originally went out on his birth date is now going to be revamped with a now 2.5-year-old by my side!

Homemade Pizza

Dough Balls

A bit of honesty for you, long before we started making our own homemade pizza dough balls….. I remember in the old days Dominic and I used to have a few takeaways per week. That is probably not entirely truthful; fifteen years ago, we would have about 4 a week. Once we get over how fat it made us and what awful slobs we had turned into, we always think of the money that we wasted. You see we must have been spending about £60 per week on takeaways plus we were also spending about £120 a week on general groceries when we did the weekly shopping. Yet most of this food would be wasted and would end up in the bin. Yet here we are 15 years later and even with inflation we now average about £65 ($90) a week and don’t have any takeaways at all. That is nearly 2/3s cheaper and the food is so much better, oh and compared to a decade ago we are a lot thinner too! And have you ever noticed the mark up on a pizza takeaway? When you think that you can make yourself the same as what you get from the takeaway company for about £3 when they charge you £15. Or as my Uncle Bob would have mentioned to me, how he lives in the US and you haven’t considered delivery driver tips. But the biggest kick we get out of our cooking is when we use up all the leftovers so that we never have any food waste. Though now in our kitchen we have a bread maker and its like lightening speed how quick it is to produce delicious bread maker pizza dough. Then make our Bread Maker Chicken & Corn Pizza then with the leftovers make Pizza Express Pizza Dough Balls. Cook them in the air fryer and you have a delicious side for lunch or dinner.

Pizza Express Pizza

Dough Balls

I am a HUGE fan of pizza chain restaurants. The bright menus, the friendly staff and the delicious pizzas. Their pizza bases are always amazing, and I always leave thinking that the diet starts tomorrow. Here in Portugal we don’t have much variety so tend to stick with either our local Pizza Hut or our on the seafront Italian Pizza Buffet. I am always more into the pizza buffet than Pizza Hut as it is a LOT cheaper. Often as a family of 5 it will cost us more than 50€ to eat out at a pizza chain and that is why I love to cook it myself at home. For one with the bread maker, on the dough setting it takes less than 30 minutes of hands-free kneading. That means that you dump the pizza dough ingredients into the bread maker and 30 minutes later come back and it is done. Then you can use your bread maker pizza dough into pizza dough balls or as a classic pizza, the choice is yours.

Air Fryer Pizza Dough Balls

Pizza Dough Balls are delicious cooked in the air fryer. We make them normally when we have leftover pizza dough, but it depends what food we want to eat and are in the mood for. I recommend that you make them from a fridge raid of leftovers. Go to your fridge and see what would work well with your pizza dough balls.

Cheese – I love mine with most types of cheese. My favourite is with mozzarella, parmesan or feta. But its up to you. Pizza Dough – leftover pizza dough that you have from when you made pizza the day before or use my delicious bread maker pizza dough.Oil – Its always best to brush your pizza dough balls with some oil in order to give it that delicious crispy coating. As we’re talking Italian food here, I recommend that you use extra virgin olive oil.

Those are the 3 main ingredients that make up my pizza dough balls and of course, having an air fryer helps! Though if you don’t already have one, we have the Philips XL as our main air fryer.

How To Cook Pizza

Dough Balls In The Air Fryer?

The most important thing to remember here is that you’re dealing with pizza dough balls in the air fryer and whatever you do, you don’t want to cook them directly in the air fryer basket. That is because the dough balls will stick to it and you will end up having to clean it out for ages and it will just ruin the yummy dough balls experience. Instead you have 2 main choices:

Air Baking Sheet – an air fryer addiction of mine. Simply, cut a baking mat to size and place it into your air fryer basket. Cook your air fryer pizza dough balls and then when done wipe clean the baking mat.Air Fryer Grill Pan – I use this all the time and its like having a grill pan for your air fryer. It replaces the air fryer basket and is perfect for cleaning.

MORE Air Fryer Pizza Recipes

I am a big pizza addict and have cooked pizza a LOT recently in the air fryer. Not always with a pizza base as sometimes I have used vegetables as the base or other leftovers.   Here are a few Air Fryer Pizza Recipes:

Air Fryer Zucchini Pizza Air Fryer Pizza BagelsAir Fryer Pitta PizzaAir Fryer Frozen Mini PizzasAir Fryer Pizza RingAir Fryer Pizza Loaded Fries

Can’t make it now? Then pin it for later!

Join The

RecipeThis.com Community:

Facebook Group | Pinterest | Twitter  Plus, don’t forget to subscribe below to join our email newsletter with updates of our latest recipes, latest freebies, our cooking stories, plus much more: