Baked eggplant slices with a classic pizza topping: tomato sauce and mozzarella. Baked eggplant pizza bites taste like pizza, but on a low-carb veggie base. Trying to cut back on carbs while possibly incorporating more vegetables into your diet? Eggplant pizzette will become a favourite!
You don’t need to adhere to a low-carb diet to appreciate eggplant pizzette. In fact, I don’t see them as a replacement for pizza dough. To me, they are delicious pizza-flavoured baked eggplants. And since eggplant is one of my favourite pizza toppings, you can imagine how in love I am with these pizza bites.
Eggplant pizza bites are like the lovechild of pizza and eggplant parmesan. They have that delicious flavour of eggplants and tomato loaded with cheese. If you love pizza or melanzane alla parmigiana, or both like I do, expect to have a big love for this recipe, too. Let’s get at it!
Ingredients and substitutions
You can use any kind of eggplant you prefer – round, oblong, purple, striped…
I have a personal preference for mozzarella ball, which for this recipe gets diced. But if you only find the more compact mozzarella you can use that one either grated or shredded.
You can use any tomato sauce but I strongly recommend my homemade pizza sauce. It only requires 4 ingredients and it’s perfect for this recipe, as well as pizza of course. One batch of sauce yields enough for a double batch of eggplant pizza bites, so if you need to make more I’d definitely recommend making the sauce from scratch, too.
How to make eggplant pizzette
- Slice the eggplant into thin slices, about 1-2 mm thin. Lay out slices on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Sprinkle some salt all over the slices.
- Add about 1-2 tablespoons tomato sauce on each slice and spread to cover the whole surface – I left 1 mm from the edges.
- Top with diced mozzarella, again trying to cover the whole surface and not only in the middle. Bake in the preheated oven at 200°C for 20 minutes, or until the eggplant skin feels soft and easy to break and the cheese has melted and browned some.
Do you have to prepare eggplant before cooking?
Salting eggplants to extract some of their moisture – and remove bitterness – is a very common practice. Proper salting of the eggplants requires at least an extra half hour. However, it is not always necessary. In this recipe, I am adding the salt for seasoning, and then adding the rest of the toppings without giving the salt time to draw water.
I have made this recipe both ways and noticed no difference in the final product. If the type of eggplant you have is so bitter you usually salt them, go ahead and add this extra step. Place eggplant slices on a kitchen towel and sprinkle with salt. When water droplets appear on the eggplants, rinse and pat dry, then the eggplants are ready to use. Budget in an extra half hour to the total recipe time.
Baked eggplant pizza bites tips
Baking time may vary depending on eggplant type and thickness of slices. As a general rule, you know the eggplants are done when the skin feels soft and easy to tear and the flesh gives very easily when pierced. If after 20 minutes your eggplant still feels firm when pricking with a fork, bake longer and check again after 5 minutes.
I prefer to use drained mozzarella balls that I cut into a fine dice. The higher moisture of fresh mozzarella, as opposed to the drier compact one that is generally preferred for pizza, makes for better results in the baked eggplant. However, grated and shredded mozzarella works equally fine!
Feel free to add more toppings! These baked eggplant pizza bites are very simple, like pizza Margherita. But nothing stops you from adding some salami, ham or mushrooms on your pizza bites. Just keep in mind that whatever addition you’re making need to somewhat pair with eggplant, but that would be the only limitation.
More snacks!
You can serve these eggplant pizzette as a side dish, but I think they’re an excellent starter, too. If you’re in the mood for such appetizers, you may also like:
- Puff pastry pizza pinwheels
- Georgian eggplant rolls with walnut filling
- Mini tomato mustard tarts
- Baked goat cheese with prosciutto
- Lard grissini with sourdough discard
- Eggplant ricotta dip
If you enjoyed this recipe please leave a comment below. Planning to try your hand at baked eggplant pizza bites another time? Pin the recipe to Pinterest!
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Baked eggplant pizzette
Ingredients
- 1 eggplant medium
- 250 g mozzarella 2*125 g ball
- 190 g pizza sauce
- pinch salt
Instructions
- Slice the eggplant into thin slices, about 1-2 mm thin. Lay out slices on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Sprinkle some salt all over the slices.
- Add about 1-2 tablespoons tomato sauce on each slice and spread to cover the whole surface - I left 1 mm from the edges.
- Top with diced mozzarella, again trying to cover the whole surface and not only in the middle. Bake in the preheated oven at 200°C for 20 minutes, or until the eggplant skin feels soft and easy to break and the cheese has melted and browned some.
