Pizza Express Dough Balls Copycat Recipe
Walnut-sized, baked hot and fast so they stay pale and pillowy, with a soft garlic butter that melts into them. About…
Cooking Pizza Express at home, and what its menu costs
Dough balls and garlic butter - a British institution built on two pounds of ingredients.
AI-generated editorial illustration created for food.fast; not a product photograph from Pizza Express.
The Pizza Express recipes on this site
Not every menu item has a recipe here, and that is deliberate - We write a page when there is something genuinely worth saying about how to make the thing.
What Pizza Express food actually tastes of
The dough balls are small and baked hot and fast. Walnut-sized, 15 minutes at 220 C, brushed with oil, so they stay pale and pillowy rather than crusting.
The garlic butter is soft, not melted. Beaten butter with crushed garlic and parsley, served as a cold pat that melts on the hot bread.
The pizza base is rolled thin and docked. No puffy rim. Roll it, prick it, and bake it on a preheated surface.
About Pizza Express
Pizza Express is British in a way the American chains on this list are not, and its most loved item is not a pizza. Dough balls with garlic butter have been on the menu since the 1960s and are, without exaggeration, one of the cheapest restaurant items to make at home that exists: a small quantity of basic bread dough and some butter beaten with garlic and parsley.
The pizzas themselves are thin, crisp-bottomed and restrained with the toppings, and the American - pepperoni, mozzarella, tomato - is the one people recreate. The house dressing on the salads has a following of its own.
What Pizza Express charges, from the menu we hold
58 priced options across 70 menu sections, as last recorded in United States. Prices move and vary by outlet, so treat these as a reference point rather than a quote.
Half the menu sits between $10.35 and $18.70. Here is the whole spread:
| Position | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest priced item | $1.60 | |
| Middle of the menu | $15.00 | |
| Dearest priced item | $29.40 |
Pizza Express changes its prices without telling you. We read this menu once a month and keep the reading – have the changes emailed to you, free, one click to stop.
Every reading we hold is on the Pizza Express price history. The full list is on the Pizza Express menu page, and the 1 item we have rebuilt at home is listed here.
What Pizza Express charges in 5 countries
The same item, priced from each country’s own menu and converted to one currency so the columns can be read against each other. Pizza Express sets prices per market, so a gap here is the chain’s pricing rather than an exchange rate artefact – and the widest gap on this list is Garlic Bread, which costs $7.90 in the dearest market and $2.80 in the cheapest.
| Item | 🇦🇺 AUD | 🇨🇦 CAD | 🇸🇬 SGD | 🇵🇭 PHP | 🇭🇰 HKD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $3.84 | $2.80 | $6.39 | $3.02 | $7.90 |
Only items Pizza Express prices in at least 5 of the markets we hold are listed, because a row with three figures in it is a gap rather than a comparison.
What Pizza Express sells nearly everywhere
Ranked by how many of the markets in our price data carry the item with a published price. This is computed from the menu tables, so it reflects what the chain actually sells rather than what it advertises.
| Menu item | Markets priced | Recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Garlic Bread | 5 | - |
| American | 4 | - |
| Hawaiian | 4 | - |
| La Reine | 4 | - |
| Butter Chicken | 3 | - |
| Lasagna Classica | 3 | - |
| Margherita | 3 | - |
| Chicken Caesar | 3 | - |
| Pepperoni | 3 | - |
| BBQ Chicken | 3 | - |
| Garlic Prawn | 2 | - |
| Chicken Wings | 2 | - |
Build your Pizza Express order, see what it costs
Tick what you would actually order. The total runs as you go, and where we have built the item at home you will see both figures side by side.
Other pizza chains
What else people compare Pizza Express against, and what we hold for each.
Domino's Pizza
3 copycat recipes
Pizza Hut
2 copycat recipes
Papa John's
2 copycat recipes
The Pizza Company
1 copycat recipe
Pizza Express is a trademark of its owner. food.fast is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Pizza Express. Recipes on this page are our own interpretations, not the company’s formulas.