Keto Pizza Chaffle Recipe

Introduction

There are some things that are just too good to give up, and pizza is one of them. Pizza is also, to be blunt, full of carbs, which makes it a hard one to work around. We have a few attempts at the problem, including our Tasty Keto Pizza With Homemade Sauce.

The chaffle version is the quick one. A chaffle crust takes about five minutes in a waffle maker, and because it comes out crisp rather than soft, it holds toppings without going floppy.

Have you ever made a pizza bagel? Homemade pizza bagels were one of my favorite things to make as a kid. I remember feeling like a little chef, when all I was really doing was slathering pizza sauce on a bagel and burying it in mozzarella.

This recipe took me straight back to that, for two reasons. The first is the texture — a well-cooked chaffle crisps up a lot like a toasted bagel half. The second is that it is just as simple. Make the base, put things on it, heat it until the cheese melts.

What Is a Chaffle?

“Chaffle” is “cheese” and “waffle” together. The original was cheese and egg cooked in a waffle maker as a bun replacement, which is our Easy Traditional Keto Chaffle Recipe.

From there it turned into a general-purpose low-carb base, and the sweet end of the range went a long way from cheese and egg: a Keto Peanut Butter Cup Chaffle, the Best Oreo Keto Chaffles, a Keto Pumpkin Cheesecake Chaffle, and a Keto Strawberry Shortcake Chaffle that tastes like the one you get at a festival.

This one sits closest to the original — it keeps the cheese and the egg, and just adds seasoning and a little coconut flour for structure.

You Need a Mini Waffle Maker

At first a mini waffle maker seemed like a waste of money. How many times have you thought, “I could really go for a mini waffle right now”? Probably never.

Four inches across is a personal pizza, so the small one is what you want here. We use the DASH Mini Waffle Maker — cheap, small, easy to clean.

If you want to feed more than one person without standing at the counter making them one at a time, the Burgess Brothers ChurWaffle Maker makes four at a time. You could host a keto chaffle pizza party with that thing.

Getting the Crust Crisp

This is a pizza, so the crust has to hold up. Two things help.

Cook it the full time. Your chaffle will look done after about a minute. It isn’t. Pull it early and you get a pale, bendy base that goes soggy the moment sauce touches it. Give it the full three to five minutes.

Then let it rest. A chaffle crisps as it cools, so give it a minute or two out of the iron before it goes anywhere near the sauce. It is the difference between a pizza chaffle you can pick up and one you eat with a fork.

If you want to push it further, put a little extra shredded cheese directly on the hot iron before the batter goes in, and a bit more on top before you close the lid. That outer layer fries against the plate into a crisp edge.

What Goes In

Egg, mozzarella, coconut flour, baking powder, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt. Most of that is probably already in your kitchen.

The coconut flour is only a teaspoon, and it is there for structure rather than flavor — enough to stop the chaffle being purely egg and cheese, not enough to make it a coconut thing.

This makes two chaffles. Split the batter in half rather than pouring it all in at once, or it comes out the sides.

Making Them Ahead and Freezing

The crust is the slow part of this recipe, and it is the part you can do in advance. Freeze the chaffles bare — not topped and baked, which gives you a soggy reheat.

Go from the freezer straight into a hot oven or air fryer to crisp them, then top and bake as usual. Do not thaw them first and do not microwave them; both leave you with a limp base, which defeats the point of using a chaffle as a crust.

Two ways to do it. You can wrap them individually in foil, which is the fewest steps but takes the longest. Or you can spread them on a baking sheet, freeze them until solid, and then tip them all into a freezer bag.

The second way is worth the extra step. If you bag them while they are still warm, the steam turns to water and freezes them into a single block, and then you are chipping one chaffle out of a brick every time you want lunch.

Pizza Toppings

Once the crust is made, the rest is yours. Plenty of pizza toppings happen to be low in carbs, including:

• Onions
• Green bell peppers
• Sausage
• Mushrooms
• Olives
• Spinach
• Herbs

Go easy with the wet ones. A four-inch crust does not have much surface area, and mushrooms or spinach release water as they cook.

Which Sauce to Use

Any low-carb pizza sauce works. We use Rao’s marinara — it is low in carbs, it tastes good, and it comes in several varieties. Rao’s also makes a pizza sauce — check its label for the macros.

You only need a tablespoon per chaffle, so a jar lasts a long time on this recipe.

If you would rather not buy a sauce for it, the homemade one from our Tasty Keto Pizza With Homemade Sauce is tomato paste, garlic, olive oil and seasoning, and it comes together while the crust bakes.

Variations To Keto Pizza Chaffle Recipe

Toppings are yours to choose — it is a pizza. Tomato paste works in place of the marinara if that is what is open, though it is thicker and more concentrated, so you need less of it.

The batter itself is less flexible. It is formulated for coconut flour, and almond flour is not a one-for-one swap: it absorbs far less liquid, so the ratio would have to change.

Eat them straight from the oven, while the cheese is still going and the edges of the chaffle are crisp. Left to sit they soften, and the whole appeal is that a chaffle crust stays firmer than a regular low-carb base would.

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Please rate the recipe below and tell us how it went in the comments — and the hashtag is #buttertogetherkitchen if you post a photo of yours.