A dish with pizza pockets and sauce on the side.

Frybread Pepperoni Pizza Pockets

Indigenous chef Billy Alexander uses a frybread method to makes his pizza pockets.

Billy Alexander may be an internationally-renowned Indigenous chef and culinary tourism ambassador, but he’s also a dad who likes to makes pizza pockets for his family. But his aren’t just regular pizza pockets – they’re made with an Indigenous twist. “I try to fold some of our Indigenous roots into whatever we make at home,” he shares in Joanna Fox’s new cookbook Little Critics: What Canadian Chefs Cook for Kids (and Kids Will Actually Eat). Replacing pizza dough with frybread, a native North American fried dough bread, does just that while preserving all the great guilty-pleasure flavours of a good pizza pocket.

A dish with pizza pockets and sauce on the side.

Frybread Stuffed Pizza

Billy Alexander makes his pizza pockets with a quick from-scratch frybread dough.
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Servings 7

Ingredients
  

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour plus more for dusting
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • cups warm water
  • 2 cups pizza sauce
  • 40 pieces mini pepperoni
  • 454 g mozzarella shredded
  • 3 cups vegetable oil

Instructions
 

  • In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix until combined. Make a small well in the middle of the flour mixture and add the warm water. Gently fold the flour mixture into the water, using a light touch, until the dough is completely homogeneous. Do not overmix the dough, as this will make it dense and heavy.
  • Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and lightly knead it. Divide it into six to eight pieces, depending on the size you want. Roll each piece into a circle ¼-inch thick and make a small depression using your thumb in the centre of each.
  • Spread some pizza sauce over the surface of each circle. Add some pepperoni, about five to six pieces for each, and a small mound of mozzarella. Fold over one edge of the dough overtop of the filling and seal the edges together.
  • In a large cast-iron skillet, heat the oil until it reaches 350°F. Working in batches, carefully transfer the frybread to the oil and fry until each side is puffed up and golden, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer the frybreads to a paper-towel-lined plate to absorb excess oil, then keep warm on a baking sheet in the oven at 250°F. Continue frying the remaining breads.
  • Serve whole or cut in halves with any extra pizza sauce for dipping. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

A cookbook cover in a light frame.

Excerpted from Little Critics: What Canadian Chefs Cook for Kids (and Kids Will Actually Eat) by Joanna Fox. Foreword by Frederic Morin. Copyright © 2022 Joanna Fox. Photography by Dominique Lafond. Photos on pages, 30, 31, 88, 89, 91, 124, 125, 212, 213, 220, 221, 237, 248, 253, 254, 255, and 256 by Maya Visnyei; and on pages 60, 61, 84, and 253 by Viranlly Liemena. Book Design by Talia Abramson. Published by Appetite by Random House, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
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