It’s that time again. Time to find a creative use for some of the leftovers that you might have from your Turkey Day celebrations. I decided this year I would turn them into pizza. Not just any pizza though, this is a small batch of Detroit-style pizza with Thanksgiving-focused toppings. It’s great. The dough is easy to whip up, you only need a bowl and a spoon, and you can stash it in the fridge for 24 hours after making it. So you can get dough in the refrigerator in prep for baking the day after T-day.
What is this sandwich pizza?
I got the idea of turning Thanksgiving leftovers into pizza from some 2023 promotional materials that clued me into DiGiorno’s Thanksgiving pizza. They brought it back this year due to its popularity and I got a chance to try it. DiGiorno’s marketing materials for this pizza list the ingredients right on the front of the box. It’s roasted turkey, with green beans, crispy onions, dried cranberries, and a gravy drizzle on a Detroit-style crust. What the front of the packaging does not mention is that the pizza is also topped with a blend of cheddar and mozzarella cheese.
Is the DiGiorno Thanksgiving pizza any good?
My wife found this pizza at our local Kroger-owned grocery store, Mariano’s, and we followed the instructions to cook it. Then we dug in for a nice Sunday night dinner.
If I’m judging this DiGiorno Thanksgiving pizza against other frozen pizzas that I’ve had in the past, this one was pretty good. The dough is a bit denser than I would like in a Detroit-style pizza, but the whole experience is savory and cheesy with some randomly placed pops of sweet cranberry.
The green beans don’t add much other than texture but the gravy drizzle makes this thing scream Thanksgiving. The roasted turkey pieces are a bit lost alongside the rest of the flavors in the pizza. I think the cranberries are a nice touch, but their tart flavor is too few and far between. This pizza would benefit from more cranberries.
Overall, I enjoyed this DiGiorno Thanksgiving pizza more than I thought I would, but we can make our own and make it taste a lot better. In order to get started on this turkey and gravy pizza I first had to secure some ingredients.
First Thanksgiving
If you live in the United States and you create food content for the internet you are legally required to have First Thanksgiving and Second Thanksgiving every year. First Thanksgiving is held earlier in November or even October so that you can capture photos and videos of Thanksgiving food to share before it’s actually the big day.
Then you have Second Thanksgiving or Real Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving. Turkey and gravy twice a year!? We’ll just have to figure out how to handle it.
It’s a tough job, but I do all of this for you.
Not sponsored by Target but they can call me
About the time that I started brainstorming ideas for my leftover Thanksgiving pizza content my wife mentioned that she saw that Target was running a 20-dollar Thanksgiving special. We checked it out and she visited our local store and picked it all up.
It turns out that the Target $20 dollar Thanksgiving Meal package contains almost everything required to make a copycat version of DiGiorno’s Thanksgiving Pizza. It has a turkey, a jar of gravy, a can of cranberry sauce, and everything you need to make green bean casserole (except for the crispy onions) and it even has 5 pounds of potatoes which is a lot of potatoes.
That’s a ton of food! We decided that all of this would work perfectly for First Thanksgiving and we snatched it up. The two of us ate on it for the better part of 3 days.
On the third day, I started turning it all into pizza. I started with my loaf pan Detroit pizza recipe I wrote about more than a year ago. The idea for this small Detroit-style pizza came about when I was testing 4-inch by 8-inch loaf pan focaccia recipes.
Sandwich-sized loaf pan focaccia
Because I had some extra time last week and because I love bread and carbs I chose this opportunity of making Turkey and gravy-based loaf pan-sized Detroit-style pizzas to also go back and refine my loaf pan-sized focaccia recipe to see if I wanted to make any adjustments to it.
I did end up tweaking it. I increased the amounts of flour and water just slightly to adjust the mass of the dough which would make the bread just a bit taller so it was perfect for slicing and sandwiching. I also adjusted the cooking time to be a bit longer so that it gave enough time for the focaccia to brown just a bit better. So this recipe is a bit more tuned in to exactly how I like it and I think you’ll enjoy it too if you need just a little bit of bread instead of a whole sheet pan of focaccia.
More focaccia content, with a new tool that will calculate a recipe for dough for any size rectangle/square or round pan, is coming in a week or two. Stay tuned for that.
Focaccia has the same “fried in butter” savory and crunchy bottom that I absolutely love in a Detroit-style pizza even though there’s no butter in either recipe.
This bread bakes with quite a bit of olive oil in the bottom of the pan which helps the bread keep from sticking and it also helps to crisp up the bottom and sides.
Even if you’re not making sandwiches, this focaccia is great when you just need a little bread to pair with a meal of pasta or sit on the side of a bowl of soup.
Loaf pan focaccia sandwich bread (8 x 4-inch loaf pan)
Here's a no-knead, easy-to-prepare mini focaccia that can be turned into two to three sandwiches. With no special equipment and a minimal amount of effort, you can easily have this bread on the table as a side for your next pasta or salad dinner.
Get RecipeThanksgiving stuffing flavored focaccia
Because Thanksgiving is coming up, and because I was thinking it might be fun to add some extra flavor to the Thanksgiving Detroit Pizza dough itself I also created a Stuffing flavored focaccia recipe as well. I took some of the flavors that I associate with stuffing or dressing and mixed them into the dough and also used some of those seasonings on top of the focaccia before it went into the oven.
I added onion soup mix to the inside of the focaccia dough and then topped it with poultry seasoning and ground black pepper. Those are the main flavors from the dressing recipe that my family makes so I incorporated them into this small loaf of bread that reminds me of the holiday.
Thanksgiving stuffing-style loaf pan focaccia
This no-knead, mini focaccia has the flavors I associate with Thanksgiving stuffing or dressing incorporated right into the experience.
Get RecipeTurkey
I don’t really need to write too much about turkey because, in theory, you’ll be making this with leftover turkey. This year we had roughly a 10-pound turkey (from that Target $20 special) and I baked it with a thermometer probe monitoring the internal turkey temperature.
Once the turkey had a little time to rest, I sliced it up and First Thanksgiving had begun.
For the pizza, I ended up slicing the turkey even thinner and cutting pieces into bite-sized chunks to make them the right size. After having this pizza a few times, I really don’t think you need to roast your own turkey. You could use roasted chicken pieces or even go a step in an easier direction and just use rotisserie chicken on this particular pizza.
Green bean casserole
If you’ve never made it, French’s brand crispy fried onions has a green bean casserole recipe that contains just five ingredients. Those five components are a can of cream of mushroom soup, a drained can of green beans, French’s fried onions, milk, and black pepper.
If you have leftover green bean casserole it’s easy to spoon out a few beans for the top of this pizza but if you do not have green bean casserole lying around, you can just drain a can of beans and use those for toppings.
Bake green bean casserole as needed
My best tip for green bean casserole is to mix things together in a big bowl and then only bake as much as you need with onions on top for each meal. This is a great opportunity to use some smaller baking dishes. That light green dish you see in the photo above cooks about half of a batch of casserole and the rest sits in a bowl in the fridge until the next night when you can bake the casserole fresh. This helps keep the crispy fried onions crispy. Putting leftover green bean casserole in the microwave is sort of sad because you’ll never get that texture back. You could add a fresh pile of crispy onions though, that would help.
Cheese
A normal Detroit-style pizza would use Brick cheese which typically hails from Wisconsin. DiGiorno claims that they are using Cheddar and low moisture Mozzarella. I used that for one pizza and I also had some Monterey jack which I blended with the cheddar for the rest of the Thanksgiving pizzas that I made. Both cheese options worked pretty much interchangeably in my experience.
Cranberry sauce and dried cranberries
DiGiorno uses dried cranberries in their pizza and I did too, but since I felt their version could use a bit more cranberry pop and because I had a can of cranberry sauce I decided to blend it up and turn it into a drizzle. Cranberry sauce and dried sweetened cranberries have similarities in flavor but they are both a bit different so the two work well on top of this pizza.
If you have a blender, the cranberry drizzle comes together in just a minute. First, you buy some cranberry sauce and then you puree the heck out of it until it is drizzle-able. I poured it into a plastic squeeze bottle and stuck it in the fridge.
Don’t forget about it though because a drizzle of cranberry sauce on a ham and cheese (or any deli meat) sandwich will bring a bunch of flavor to the experience. Keeping it in a squirt bottle in the fridge has upped my deli meat-focused sandwiches a great deal over the past couple of weeks.
Gravy drizzle
Gravy is super easy to make and the homemade version is better than the stuff you can buy in the can or jar. But I still always buy a jar for Thanksgiving. There will come a time when the gravy is all used up and there’s still a bit of turkey or stuffing leftover and it’s clutch to just be able to open a jar that might save the meal.
In the case of this pizza though, we were getting a jar of gravy with the Target deal that my wife purchased so I used that for this pizza. You can use homemade gravy or the “home-style” gravy from a jar, both will work just fine. I simply poured all of the gravy into a plastic squeeze bottle so that I could drizzle it on the fully cooked pizza to add extra gravy flavor to the top.
Loaf pans
This recipe is built around 8 x 4-inch loaf pans. You can get two of these loaf pans for around 16 bucks on Amazon. They’re usually sold in pairs but make sure you’re using the 8 x 4-inch standard loaf pans and not 9 x 5-inch pans. If you don’t already have them, these are the pans that I own.
You can also double all of the ingredients in the recipe below and bake this in an 8 x 8-inch baking pan if you have one. Double the pizza, double the fun.
Pre-bake assembly
There are three toppings that need to be applied before baking. Those are cheese, turkey, and green beans. Everything else gets added after the pizza is removed from the oven.
Post-bake build process
Once everything is baked, it’s time to add more toppings to the pizza.
My Thanksgiving leftover pizza
Here are some photos of the finished pizzas I made during the testing of this recipe. The recipe is just down below.
Thanksgiving Detroit-style personal pan pizza
This cheesy pizza with a crunchy crust has all the flavors of Thanksgiving piled right on top. This recipe was originally meant to be used by people who have Thanksgiving leftovers, but I also share all the ingredients you can use to recreate it if you don't have any leftovers. See the accompanying Thanksgiving pizza blog post for more details about ingredients.
Ingredients:
Pizza dough- 120 grams bread flour (1 cup - can use all-purpose flour)
- 3 grams salt (1/2 teaspoon)
- 4 grams instant yeast (a bit more than 1/2 teaspoon)
- 6 grams olive oil (1 1/2 teaspoon)
- 96 grams water (1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon)
- non-stick cooking spray
- 8 grams olive oil (2 teaspoons - this goes in the loaf pan)
- 1 1⁄2 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
- 1 1⁄2 ounces Monterey Jack cheese or low moisture mozzarella, shredded
- 1 to 3 ounces turkey, slice and cut into bite sized pieces
- 1 can green beans, drained
- 1 can of cranberry sauce
- 15 to 20 sweetened cranberries
- store bought crispy fried onions (French's is the brand I normally buy)
- 1 to 2 ounces turkey gravy (you can also buy turkey gravy in a jar)
Suggested Equipment
Directions:
Pizza dough: add flour, salt, and yeast to a medium-sized bowl and stir all dry ingredients until thoroughly combined.
Measure and add 6 grams of olive oil (1.5 teaspoons) and water, and stir for 2 minutes to ensure that all dough components are combined and there are no dry flour spots. The dough will be very sticky and probably difficult to handle with your hands, so keep using the spoon.
Spray the inside of an 8x4-inch loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray and then add 2 teaspoons or 8 grams of olive oil to the pan and tilt the pan a few times to allow the olive oil to spread out some.
Add the sticky dough on top of the olive oil in the pan and moisten your fingertips with some of the olive oil to prevent sticking. Using your olive-oiled fingertips, press the dough to flatten it and try to get the dough to reach close to all four corners of the pan. Flipping the dough after you've flattened it will help to coat the dough thoroughly with olive oil and make it easier to handle with your fingers.
Once the dough is flattened and stretching close to the corners of the pan, cover the pan and allow it to rise for 1.5 to 2 hours or until it is really puffy and at least doubled in size.
Refrigerator option: if you want to bake the pizza the next day, let the dough rise for 1 hour and then place the pan with the dough in the refrigerator and store it covered with plastic wrap for up to 24 hours. Remove the dough 30 minutes before you want to bake it.
Near the end of the rise time, preheat your oven to 500 degrees F (260 C).
Pre-bake toppings: add all of the shredded cheese and spread it out on top of the dough. Top the cheese with bite-sized pieces of turkey.
With a fork, transfer 15 or so drained green beans and spread them out consistently around the top of the pizza. If you are making this with leftover green bean casserole, don't worry if you get some globs of the mushroom soup and onion mixture that's mixed in with the beans, it actually works really well on this pizza.
Once topped with toppings, bake the pizza for 18 to 20 minutes.
Remove from the pan and put it on a cooling rack to cool while you add the rest of the toppings.
Post-bake toppings: puree a can of cranberry sauce in the blender. Add the cranberry sauce to a squeeze bottle to use to drizzle on the pizza. You can use a spoon if you want, and if you don't want to puree the sauce, you can just add very small spoonfuls of the sauce on top of the warm pizza in random places.
Top the pizza with a few sweetened cranberries, and then add some crispy fried onions.
Finish garnishing the pizza by drizzling on some cranberry sauce and a drizzle of turkey gravy.
Notes:
More pizza? if you want a larger pizza, and you have an 8 x 8-inch baking pan, you can just double every ingredient in this recipe and it will work perfectly to create twice as much pizza.
Check back next week
Next week will be frickin December. Get ready. Santa is coming and you better not be on the bad sandwich list!
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