Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza

What is an Upside-Down Puff Pastry?

The Upside-Down Puff Pastry is a TikTok trend, where you bake toppings and puff pastry upside-down, and then flip it over after baking, to reveal the final product – right side up.

The original idea was created by Lily Ghodrati on TikTok, where she shows us how to make a caramelized honey and nectarine upside-down puff pastry.

Since then, the internet has come up with various topping variations, such as sliced green apples, honey, and brie cheese. However, today I will be showing you a popular, savoury version – the Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza.

It’s like a pineapple upside down cake, but instead of a pineapple and cake, it’s pizza toppings and puff pastry!

This Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza is made with 3 simple ingredients: puff pastry dough, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, with the optional pizza toppings, such as pepperoni. All the ingredients used in this recipe are pre-made, giving us a quick and easy, weekday meal/snack!

It’s an exciting cooking activity to do with your family and kids. These puffs pack great in a lunchbox, or can be eaten as an afternoon snack. Simply reheat it in the toaster oven or air fryer to warm it up.

If you like cheesy, bread-y goodness, like this Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza, then try out my Gochujang Garlic Bread recipe!

Please watch my video, as I walk you through how to make them, and hopefully entertain you with my witty sense of humour.

Now let’s get Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza-ing!

Why you should bake puff pastry, upside-down:

You may think this upside-down trend is pointless, like why not just make it right side up?

Well, for this upside-down pizza, the cheese gets caramelized while baking in the grease that the pepperoni slices excrete. This in turn increases the pizza flavour, seasoning the flavour with each slice.

Oh yeah – and it’s just plain fun!

What inspired this Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza?

Besides the obvious TikTok trend, this upside-down puff pastry concept actually stemmed from the tarte tatin (whether aware of it or not).

What is a tarte tatin?

Tarte tatin is basically a fancy, French apple pie, made with puff pastry dough, apples, and sugar. It is arranged upside down in a cake pan, baked, then flipped upside-down to reveal the sweet creation.

This Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza uses the same concept, but is baked into individual pieces, thus requiring no cake pan.

What is puff pastry?

Puff pastry is simply hundreds of thin layers of butter and dough, rolled out into a thin sheet.

Though raw puff pastry dough looks very thin and compact, once you bake it in the oven, it’ll puff up quite a bit, so don’t be surprised to see a large, puffy pastry once the timer goes off. This happens because once the cold butter in the dough melts in the oven, steam is released, causing all those layers to separate and the pastry to puff up sky high! 

What kind of puff pastry should I use?

I like to use pre-made puff pastry dough, but, by all means, you can also make your own dough. The pre-made packages of puff pastry can always be found in the frozen aisle of most supermarkets.

You may be bombarded with two options:

1. Puff Pastry, which uses vegetable shortening as the fat
2. Butter Puff Pastry, which uses butter as the fat

But, even if you use butter puff pastry, it most likely has butter added in addition to the vegetable shortening. If this is the case, then just save your money and get the cheapest one – the puff pastry with vegetable shortening.

How to thaw frozen puff pastry:

Puff pastry usually comes frozen, in rolls of two. The night before using your puff pastry, remove the amount of rolls you need, and place it in the fridge to fully thaw (6-8 hours). In the morning, you will be ready to roll the puff pastry sheet out and bake with it!

Note: Do not thaw puff pastry on the kitchen counter. This method will lead to an inconsistent dough temperature. The butter will melt in the dough, thus causing the puff pastry to not properly rise in the oven.

Puff pastry flavours:

Though this trend started out as a sweet snack, flavour variations have quickly evolved.

Here are some of the most popular toppings for this Upside-Down Puff Pastry:

Sweet

• Honey and nectarine slices
• Honey, green apple slices, and brie cheese

Savoury

• Pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni
• Ham and cheese

What does Upside-Down Puff Pastry Pizza taste like?

When you first take a bite, you get hit with the flaky and airy puff pastry crust.

Then you chew a little, and you can taste the spices of the pepperoni, with the savouriness of the pizza sauce. The light texture of the puff pastry crust juxtaposes the chewy and stringy mozzarella cheese.

The airy texture of the puff pastry makes this pizza more addicting compared to the typical, dense texture of the average pizza crust.