Pizza Rolls
Recipe for easy homemade pizza rolls. A homemade spin on a kid food favorite that the whole family will love. Easy and fast to make.
Easy homemade pizza rolls are a family favorite.
This post was updated Sept 2024.
Pizza rolls are easy to make, kids love them, adults love them, and the possibilities for customizing are practically endless. I shared a picture on my Instagram and Facebook pages of my kids lunches with these pizza rolls and I got so many requests for the recipe!
Pizza rolls are one of my favorite things to pack for lunch - really anything in the pizza for lunch category is always a hit with the kids.
The full pizza rolls recipe is at the end of this post, so keep reading because I’ve got lots of handy tips for you about how to make these. But if you really want to just skip to this easy recipe, you can click the button below.
You can make these with as little 3 items from your fridge, only a few minutes to put together.
You could totally go make some of these now and be eating them in 20 minutes - that's how fast! And as with most of my favorite recipes - the ingredients here are very flexible.
I think these might be one of the perfect kid foods.
They're small enough for little hands, they are not messy, they seem to travel and keep well, and - best of all - they taste like pizza!
A few tips about how I make these pizza rolls.
Because my goal with this recipe is to have something that comes together super fast and easy, I go with a packaged dough most of the time. Usually I use a can of crescent roll dough from Trader Joe's. But use any quick and easy dough you like.You could also use biscuit dough, or certainly if you have homemade dough, go for it!
If I'm buying pre-made dough I try to look for one that's not got too much nasty stuff in it. The TJ's brand is not too bad. It's not as easy to handle as some others (maybe because it's missing some of the chemical dough conditioners and junk), but for this recipe that's ok. You're not actually making crescent rolls with it.
For the sauce I used a canned pizza sauce or sometimes just plain tomato sauce. Any kind you like will do. I use traditional mozzarella for ours most of the time, but any flavor if cheese you like would be great too.
The amounts of the sauce and cheese are also flexible - it's really about your personal taste. Just don't add too much - you don't want to squish it all out when you cut.
These are such great kid food, my kids scarf them up.
But the husband and I eat our fair share too. I think they are a perfect make-ahead item for kids lunches.
Everybody loves homemade pizza rolls!
Let's be honest - a big green salad with a few of these on the side, doesn't that sound like a perfect weeknight dinner? These freeze great. Whenever I make them I always at least double the recipe and I put a bunch in the freezer.
It doesn't get any easier for packing a school lunch - to pull out a few of these, throw in a few carrots and a little fruit, and lunch is done.
Pizza Rolls Recipe
Easy Homemade Pizza Rolls
A crowd pleasing favorite!
ingredients:
- Dough - 1 can of prepared crescent roll dough. Or any other dough of your choice.
- A little flour (any kind will do - it's just for rolling the dough)
- A few tablespoons of pizza sauce (or just plain tomato sauce)
- About 1/3 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, or whatever cheese you like.
- Other fillings of your choice - cut into small pieces (pepperoni, ham, veggies, etc.)
instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Take the dough out of the can, sprinkle both sides with a little flour
- Fold it over on itself once or twice (otherwise it's trying to come apart at the seams)
- Roll out into a rectangle until it's about 1/4 inch thick
- Spread pizza sauce or tomato sauce thinly and evenly across the whole piece of dough
- Sprinkle cheese evenly
- Add other toppings as desired
Start rolling from the long edge, you want your final roll to be long and narrow. Try to get it as tight as you can without feeling like you're squishing it.
- At this point if you've handled it a lot and you feel like your dough is getting too soft to slice, stick it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so to firm up.
- Slice into 3/4 inch pieces with a very sharp knife.
- Lay your cut rolls out evenly on a baking sheet - either spray with a bit of cooking spray or line with parchment
- Bake at 350 for about 12-14 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and dough is golden brown.
NOTES:
Double or triple or quadruple this recipe and make lots extra. These freeze great and are perfect for the lunch box.
Pizza Muffins and Meatball Muffins!!
These little guys really are irresistible! The meatball muffins are like a little bite size (or two bite!) meatball sandwich. Everything you want - a tasty meatball, a little drippy with sauce, melted cheese, and soft bread that gets a little soaked up with sauce - but in a much more manageable size, so it's not all running down your elbows.
The pizza version is the same, minus the meatball - just a couple bites of saucy and cheesy goodness. They are very much like my pizza rolls, only shaped a little different. I made these for my kids to have for dinner, and enough to save for a school lunch later in the week.
I don't think I can call these recipes, they're just too easy. These were really just something I threw together, but as soon as I shared it on IG and FB I had folks asking me for the recipe. So I guess these easy crowd pleasers are what you all want! I don't get as much opportunities to cook and photograph something as I'd like. This isn't one of those food blogs where people are cooking something just to photograph and blog about. No, here you are getting what we are actually eating. But this was a rare occasion when I was cooking something in the middle of the day to have ready for later, so I was able to actually get some nice photos of it for you.
The "Ingredients"
- Crescent roll dough
- Tomato sauce
- Cheese
- Cooked meatballs
I use Trader Joe's crescent roll dough. I think it has a much more 'homemade' flavor than the other brands, and even though it's still quite processed it at least doesn't have a big long list of unrecognizable stuff in it. It doesn't come out of the can very nicely, they almost always tear when it pops open. I'm guessing that this is because the package isn't lined with all that nice BPA, so it's a tradeoff I"m willing to make. You could use biscuits as well, or you could certainly do this with any kind of homemade dough. One can of dough has 8 rolls, so you'll need 1 1/2 for a dozen muffins. I made two pans, half with meatballs and half without, so 3 cans of dough and 12 meatballs.
My tomato sauce was just canned tomatoes, pureed with a blender. We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner last night so I had heated up the meatballs in the sauce. I think you could use any kind of tomato sauce or pizza sauce.
The meatballs I used were a combination of some homemade, and some frozen from the store - I had a little bit of each. My homemade meatball recipe is here. If you're going to make meatballs for this I would suggest you make them small. The dough is very tender, so I don't think it will hold a big meatball. These meatballs were all cooked and cold from the refrigerator (not frozen).
And for cheese - well, I would have used shredded mozzarella, but I was out, so I just took some mozzarella string cheese and tore it into pieces. I think any kind of cheese you've got would be just great.
Directions:
- Line muffin tins with dough. For the crescent rolls, I used one piece per muffin space, and just folded and worked it around to shape like a little nest. I did not grease my pans at all because my pans are new and pretty well nonstick, and this dough has a lot of fat in it.
- Put in a small spoonful of sauce
- For the meatball muffins: place 1 meatball on top of dough.
- Cover with shredded or just pieces of cheese.
- If you have pieces of dough hanging over the sides, fold them over just a bit.
- Bake in a 350 oven for 12-15 minutes.
- Let cool for a few minutes before trying to remove from the pans, they are much easier to handle once the cheese has set up a little.
And that's it. Easy!
