Crunchy Perfection: How to Make Irresistible Air Fryer Pizza Bagels in Minutes

Want to make pizza but don't want to roll out pizza dough? No problem. Just make bagel pizzas. The best part is that these pizzas are super easy to make in your air fryer. Great for a hot summer night where you don't want to turn on the oven to have homemade pizza! You can you use any type of bagel you want like sesame bagels, thin bagels, or mini bagels.

Are you tired of the same ordinary pizza pie? If you haven't tried them before bagels are an excellent way to deliver sauce, cheese, and toppings to your mouth without much time and effort. Let me go through how it's done.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Air Fryer Tips
• Oven Instructions
• How to Freeze
• How to Air Fry Pizza Bagels

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients that you need to make these pizza bagels:

• Bagels
• Mozzarella cheese
• Tomato sauce (jarred, canned, our homemade)
• Toppings of your choice (I go for pepperoni and sausage)

While you can keep it simple when creating these pizza bagels and just use regular bagels, you can also mix it up. Look for different flavored bagels. My two favorite are sesame and everything bagels. The toasty sesame seeds add so much flavor especially when they get a little extra toasty in the air fryer.

Thin Bagels

Of if you are more of a thinner crust type of pizza fan, then you can find thin bagels at most grocery stores. The beauty is that the air frying is pretty much the same not matter what type of bagel you are using.

The bagels I used were the Thomas Bagel Thins that I picked up at WinCo Foods store in Washington. Orowheat also makes thin bagels as well. They have ones that are 100% whole wheat that you can find at stores like Safeway.

Mini bagels are a great choice as well for smaller sized pizza or if you are trying to make a homemade version of the Bagel Bites you find in the frozen section of the grocery store. I like them for my 6 year old because they are a smaller serving size for her smaller appetite. I think kids do better when they are presented with the amount of food they are able to eat. That way they don't feel they "failed" to eat all of their food and feel guilty about it.

Thomas also sell mini bagels, that I also got at WinCo Foods. They also carried Franz Mini bagels.

Cheese

As for cheese, grate the cheese yourself. It's often cheaper to do so. And many bags of shredded cheese contains things to keep the cheese from getting moldy. That can actually include dextrose sometimes, which is sugar. No reason to add that to your diet.

While mozzarella is the most common cheese you can also make pizza with Brick cheese, tuma cheese, or even muenster cheese. Little Caesar's actually uses a combo of mozzarella and muenster.

Tomato Sauce

I love to make my own tomato sauce when I have tomatoes straight from my garden. But when that is not the case, then I will either make it from tomatoes I find at a farm stand or market.

When it's not the time of year for that, I turn to cans of tomato paste. They are super cheap to buy. What I do is I like to thin out the tomato paste with some water until I get the right texture. Then I add all my seasonings (fresh herbs are the best!) and salt. I usually needs some sweetness to balance out the acidic of the tomato paste. I like to add a little honey, but not until I add enough salt first, then I add the sweetener.

I never really measure anything out when I do this. I do it all by taste and getting the texture right.

Did you know you can add pumpkin to tomato sauce to make it sweeter? It's very subtle so you won't even taste it. It's a great option in the last summer when both tomatoes and pumpkins are in season. Or you can even use some canned pumpkin along with tomato paste any time of the year.

As for toppings, let your heart run wild. Anything you like on pizza from pepperoni to pineapple are fair game. If you use it for a normal style pizza, you can use it here.

Air Fryer Tips

The beautiful part of making these pizzas is that it's super fast. All you are doing is looking to heat up the sauce and toppings while melting the cheese.

I do have a piece of advice for you. Preheat your air fryer before starting your first bagel. Once it's hot turn it off. Place your bagels in the basket and then shut it. Allow the bagels to sit for a couple minutes before turning on the air fryer.

Why? Well it's possible that your cheese and toppings are going to get all blown around the air fryer when you first start it. By allowing the bagels to sit in the air fryer first before starting, the cheese will melt enough to stay put along with the toppings attached to it. It will also help you not have to clean up a mess later.

How long do you need to air fry them? I do 390 degrees for just 4 minutes.

That tends to be enough time to heat everything up and get that cheese melted. You can go a little longer to brown the cheese more but be watchful so you don't burn the cheese or cook the bagels so long they become tough and hard to eat.

It's also important to not stack the bagels when you are air frying them. You are better off working in batches. What I often have done is have each of my kids make their own bagels with the toppings they want and then cook them for themselves.

Oven Instructions

Don't have an air fryer? No problem. Here is how I do it in the oven.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Puy everything on your bagels in any order you want in and how much you want. Isn't customization great! You can't get that with frozen pizza bagels. Place your bagels onto a sheet pan.

Bake for about 7-10 minutes. All you are looking to do is heat the bagel, sauce, and toppings as well as melt the cheese. Let your pizza bagels cool for a couple minutes before eating.

How to Freeze

You can also freeze them for later use. Just place them into a good plastic ziptop bag and into the freezer. When you wish to eat them, just warm them back up again in the air fryer. It usually takes about 3-5 minutes to get them hot enough again if they are coming directly from the freezer. They are great to have on hand when you need a quick lunch, dinner, or snack.