Gluten Free Pizza Bites

These soft, flavorful gluten free pizza bites are ready for the oven in minutes. Add some pepperoni, or switch up the spices to suit your tastes.

Why small bites are a win for everyone

First of all, and perhaps most importantly for busy families, miniature foods make it really easy to grab them and go. Ideally, we sit down at the table together for 3 square meals a day. But hahahahahaha ? who can do that? We do the best we can, and then we give ourselves some room to be human.

Second of all, it’s a great way to get smaller kids who inevitably go through periods of pickiness, to try “just a bite or two.” It’s less of a commitment! Oh, and since these tender gluten free pizza bites are yeast-free like my yeast-free gluten free pizza dough, they’re even less of a time commitment and of course more portable.

Use a mini muffin tin or standard size muffin tin

I very much like to make them in a miniature muffin tin, but of course, they work just as well in a standard 12-cup  muffin tin. The diced cheese tends to bubble up and out of the wells during baking, but once everything cools down a bit out of the oven, the bites come up and out of the wells quite easily.

You can line the muffin tins with cupcake wrappers, and you’ll get a puffier, nicer shaped pizza bite. To make sure the paper wrapper won’t stick to the baked bite, spray it very lightly with cooking oil spray before filling it.

Make ahead tips

These pizza bites freeze very nicely and then defrost well in the refrigerator or on the counter, and are pretty much guaranteed to please everyone in the family. Not to mention how ridiculously easy it is to make up a big batch, with little to no advanced planning. Sometimes, you just need an all-around “win.”

I’ve also managed to make these very allergy-friendly with a few quick substitutions (please see the ingredients and substitution section just below). I’ve made these gluten free pizza bites with my suggested dairy-free substitutes a number of times, and they aren’t as beautiful, but they taste great.

I love having these on hand in the refrigerator for an after-school snack or a supplement to pretty much any dinner. Just put them in a tightly sealed container and they won’t dry out for days

Ingredients and substitutions

Dairy

These are surprisingly easy to make dairy free. I’ve made them myself using nondairy milk (unsweetened almond milk is my favorite nondairy milk for cooking and baking), replaced the mozzarella cheese with vegan mozzarella (my favorite brand is called Violife, but Daiya is also really good), and replaced the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese with miniature pepperoni pieces (or chopped larger pepperoni).

You can easily replace cow’s milk with any unsweetened nondairy milk. My favorite is unsweetened almond milk for its fat content and relatively neutral flavor.

Eggs

The two eggs in this recipe should be able to be replaced with two “chia eggs,” each of which is 1 tablespoon of ground chia seeds mixed with 1 tablespoon lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel. I haven’t tried it myself, though, and you’ll see flecks from the ground chia in the pale bites but it shouldn’t add much if any taste.

Spices

Garlic powder, dried basil, and dried oregano are my three go-to Italian-style spices. You can replace them with whatever sounds good to you, though.

I prefer to use dried spices in baking, as they’re more potent in their dried form. Feel free to sprinkle fresh spices on top of the pizza bites before serving, though.