Keto Chicken Pesto Pizza

Do you think I can mix the dough the night before? This is my first fathead pizza and your recipe is the one I’m trusting!! Thanks!

Pat the bell pepper dry or it’ll steam the crust.

Honestly, melting mozzarella in a microwave to make pizza dough seemed like a joke the first time I read it. Made it anyway. Once the mixer pulled it into actual dough I stopped second-guessing myself. I was braced for the cherry tomatoes to make it soggy in the middle, but the crust held clean – apparently that’s what the xanthan gum is for. Does this work with rotisserie chicken, or does how you cut it matter?

Roasted bell pepper against pesto hits a sweetness no tomato-based version gets close to. Cut the chicken smaller than you think, the top goes wet otherwise.

5.1 net carbs per slice is what finally got me to try fathead dough. I cook a fair amount but I’d been putting this off (xanthan gum is one of those ingredients I’ve bought twice and never actually used). Crust held up under the pesto and cherry tomatoes, no sogginess anywhere. Does the dough freeze before baking, or is it better to bake first and freeze after?

Confession: I once bought a backup bag of shredded mozzarella just to have it standing by while the first one melted. That tells you where I’m at with this recipe. By batch eight or nine I switched to fresh mozzarella on top, and the way it pulls when you slice it is just different. Hard to go back. The rotisserie chicken is the real unlock though, I keep a container in the fridge most weeks so this stays a weeknight option with zero planning. The macros are kind of absurd: 27g protein, 5.1 net carbs. I keep double-checking the numbers because it doesn’t feel like it should work out that cleanly. Also started keeping a second dough ball in the freezer on batch nights. Presses out after about ten minutes on the counter and somehow comes out crispier than fresh dough. Did not see that coming.

Drained a jar of Trader Joe’s sun-dried tomatoes, patted them down, and used those instead of the cherry tomatoes. The oil that stays on them even after drying? It seeps into the crust edge a little and you get this crispy-oily bite right where the dough meets the topping that I keep thinking about. No moisture issue at all. The tomato flavor is just more, somehow, that acidic punch without the watery slide you get from fresh. I kept everything else exactly the same (garlic sauce, pesto, the full 3.5 cups of mozzarella in the dough) and just made that one swap, and now I genuinely can’t see going back to fresh on this one. Third time with the sun-dried version this month.

Pizza was the one thing I couldn’t make work on keto. Tried a cauliflower version once and didn’t open that app again. Made this last weekend with leftover rotisserie chicken and the smell when the pesto hit the oven caught me off guard. The dough held up under all those toppings, no soggy center, which every other keto crust I’ve tried has failed at. Didn’t expect to feel this good about pizza night again.

Wasn’t sure the fathead dough would hold up under pesto and fresh tomatoes, but the bottom stayed crisp the whole way through.

I’ve been making this on Sundays for the past month and the prep workflow has gotten pretty dialed in. Double batch the fathead dough before it cools, portion it out, and you’ve got two pizzas done in basically the same time as one. The chicken folds in naturally since I usually have roasted chicken on hand anyway (it’s one of those recipes that rewards already having things prepped). Where I’d knock a star is the cherry tomatoes get watery on day two, so now I skip them on the batch and add fresh ones when I reheat individual slices. The pesto and garlic sauce layer holds up completely fine, which surprised me. Cold slice the next morning is legitimately good, and that’s not something I can say about most fathead pizzas.

My husband said this tasted ‘fancier than our usual pizza nights’ and I didn’t tell him it was because I used two sauces (the garlic and the pesto).

Roll the fathead dough between two sheets of parchment. Top sheet peels right off and the crust slides onto the pan in one piece. Four stars because I lost half my first attempt before I figured that out, but every batch since has been clean.

There was this little spot near my college apartment that did a chicken pesto pizza I ate probably once a week senior year. I haven’t thought about it in years (three years of keto, so the timing makes sense) but one bite of this and I was back there. The garlic sauce layered under the pesto is exactly what got me.

Love this one. The pesto under the chicken instead of just on top is the move. One tip: my first attempt I rolled the dough too thick and the center needed an extra 8 or 9 minutes. Once I got it thinner (more than I expected for a fathead dough) it baked evenly and those edges got properly golden. Measure as you go, especially your first time with this dough.

Never made fathead dough before, so totally new here. Don’t have xanthan gum on hand. Can I skip it or will the crust just fall apart without it?

This recipe is amazing! My dough came out perfectly and my pizza is super delicious