California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza Recipe

I have been putting in a lot of time working on my Weekend Grillers site this past week and, writing about it constantly makes me seriously crave Barbeque -- even more than usual. So I thought for today we could look at one of my son's favorite restaurants and one of their specialties -- California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza



Photo by Amy the Nurse

   

California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Chicken Pizza

A California Pizza Kitchen Copycat Recipe

To See More California Pizza Kitchen Copycat Recipes - Click HERE

       

California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza Recipe

If You enjoy California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza, You will LOVE making it at Home with our Easy Recipe.

Ingredients 
 
Chicken

1/2 to 1 pounds of boneless/skinless Chicken Breasts cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
2 tablespoons BBQ Sauce

Pizza

1 basic Pizza Dough
Some Cornmeal, Semolina or Flour for easy handling of the Dough
1/2 cup BBQ Sauce (Just keep the bottle handy – Mark)
2 tablespoons shredded Smoked Gouda Cheese
2 cups shredded Mozzarella Cheese
1/2 cup Red Onion Pieces – sliced into 1/8 inch pieces
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Cilantro

Instructions 
 
Preheat the Oven to 500 Degrees (see Note #1 below) 
 
Cook the Chicken

Fry the chicken in the olive oil over medium heat until just cooked – about 5 to 6 minutes. Do not overcook.
Set in refrigerator until chilled.
Add the two tablespoons of BBQ sauce and toss to coat.
Set aside.

Assemble the Pizza

Using a large spoon, spread BBQ Sauce evenly over the prepared dough.
Sprinkle the smoked Gouda over the sauce.
Cover with 1 1/2 cups mozzarella.
Distribute chicken pieces over cheese.
Sprinkle onion pieces over top.

Bake the Pizza

Place the pizza in the preheated oven and bake until the center is bubbly – about 8 to 10 minutes.
Remove pizza and sprinkle with cilantro.

Slice and enjoy your Homemade California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Chicken Pizza.

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Note #1: The hotter you can make your oven, the better it is for cooking pizza. This is the major difference between Pizzeria Pizza and homemade pizza. The professional ovens in a Pizzeria will crank up many times hotter than the average home oven. There are a couple of things you can do to help make your oven cook pizza better:

Buy a good Pizza Stone. A Pizza Stone is a big piece of tile you stick on the bottom shelf of your oven and just leave there. It does several things to help with baking but mainly it holds and concentrates the heat, thus making the oven hotter and more efficient. This is especially good when cooking pizza.

Preheat your oven (with you Pizza Stone inside to absorb the heat) as hot as it will go for up to an hour before you cook the pizza.
 

Old Stone Oven 14-Inch by 16-Inch Baking Stone

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000E1FDA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0000E1FDA&linkCode=as2&tag=ccr01-20&linkId=466TL3PZLEPVQFVE
  • Made in the USA 
  • Pizza stone duplicates crispy pizzeria-style crust
  • Firebrick construction offers superior heat retention and distribution 
  • Flat surface releases pizza or bread quickly and easily 
  • Durable texture resists cracking caused by high temperatures

 

California Pizza Kitchen Pasta, Salads, Soups, And Sides

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688164668/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0688164668&linkCode=as2&tag=ccr01-20&linkId=ATC2DQ2XCKH4GAVL
At California Pizza Kitchen restaurants across the country, many of the favorite dishes (and most-requested recipes) are not the pizzas!

Customers keep coming back for the boldly flavored pastas, soups, salads, and side dishes. 

The follow-up to the bestselling California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook , this new cookbook serves CPK customers just what they ordered -- secret restaurant recipes, never available before. With gorgeous color photographs of the finished dishes throughout the book, CPK fans will be tempted by recipes for Oriental Chicken Salad, Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Kung Pao Spaghetti, to name just a few.

       

Photo of "California Pizza Kitchen - The Original BBQ Chicken" is by Amy the Nurse and is used by permission under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Creative Commons License. Read the Full License Here - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode. Thank you, Amy the Nurse. Great Picture. Photos may be "representative" of the recipe and not the actual finished dish. All photo licenses listed were correct at the time of the posting of the page. Recipe is our adaption of several recipes formally widely-circulated on the internet - courtesy of the Wayback Machine. Additional Information Courtesy of Wikipedia and is used by permission.