Blaze Pizza Hacks That Will Change Your Life

The phrase "the Chipotle of..." got a little worn out toward the middle of the 2010s. Those words were used to describe pretty much any fast casual restaurant where you could watch as short order cooks whipped up customized food orders with countless combinations of toppings. But with the roaring success of Blaze Pizza — where you can choose among four sauces, eight cheeses, and dozens of meats, veggies and finishers to create your own custom pizza — perhaps there's a new version of the phrase that should take over. If the pizza chain conquers America the way Chipotle did, we might just start calling your favorite customizable pierogi joint "The Blaze Pizza of Polish Food," after all.

Whether that moniker catches on remains to be seen, but what we do know is that a place where you can literally put anything and everything on your food makes the menu hard to hack even further. Fortunately, we chatted with Blaze Pizza co-owner and executive chef Brad Kent, who hipped us to some off-menu items, specials, and creative combinations you can use to make your next visit to Blaze Pizza even more delicious and catered exactly to your tastes.

The cheesy, carby, indulgence that is stuffed-crust pizza isn't the exclusive domain of Little Caesar's and Pizza Hut. The design-your-own pizza people at Blaze can make it for you too, even if it doesn't seem readily apparent from the assembly line. 

Blaze Pizza co-founder and executive chef Brad Kent told Mashed it's as simple as asking for extra dough: First, ask for a layer of cheese on top of your first layer of dough, and then, request another layer of dough on top of that. Then, top the pizza as you might otherwise with any selection from Blaze Pizza's billions of possible combinations. 

Could the extra crust and cheese add up to a bit more carbs and fat than you might care to think about having to burn off? Maybe. But is it also a heavenly crispy cheese sandwich topped with even more deliciousness? Why yes, it is. So maybe you should just enjoy the stuffed crust pizza while you can and think about calories some other time.

In addition to its traditional red sauce, Blaze Pizza also offers other pizza sauces like white cream sauce, spicy red sauce, and red sauce dollops. Many of Blaze's pizzas are also finished off with drizzles of sauce atop the entire pie to give it both a colorful aesthetic for the 'gram and also slight hints of other flavors to accent what a customer has already created. But even though these sauces are usually reserved for finishing touches, you can make your pizza extra zesty if you use them as the base instead.

"Think a gooey cheese pizza with pesto base," Blaze Pizza co-founder and executive chef Brad Kent told Mashed. "Or barbecue chicken pizza, with an extra barbecue kick." 

Like with any amalgamation of Blaze Pizza toppings, you can get as crazy as you want with the sauces by mixing any of the above with each other on the pie, Kent advises.

That ordering well-done steak is an abomination is not necessarily a rule of steakhouse dining, but it's still seen by some as something you should never do. Pizza on the other hand? Now that's another story. There's entire styles of pizza based on crispy crust and charred cheese, as anyone who's ever dined around New Haven, Connecticut can attest. 

Blaze Pizza's founders understand that there are a good number of people who like their pizzas even crispier than the chain's 900-degree ovens already cook them. But you've gotta speak up to get it that way. Blaze co-founder and executive chef Brad Kent told Mashed getting your pizza extra crispy is as simple as telling the folks behind the counter you want it "well-done."

And dont' worry: You'll get no side-eye from the server or a chef walking out of the kitchen to explain why they don't cook it that way — just a hot, crispy pizza cooked a minute or so longer than usual, and you with a big, well-done grin on your face.

Co-founder and executive chef Brad Kent told Mashed that the gluten-free crusts at Blaze Pizza are put on special mats in the oven to help minimize cross-contamination. As a result, they typically don't get as crispy as the original crusts, which cook right on the oven's surface. The company also admits on its website that because its people are handling wheat-based flour and pizza dough all day, there's a good amount of inherent cross-contamination in its restaurants. It's suggested to those who are celiac or highly sensitive to gluten to "carefully consider your dining choices."

That all said, if you're simply looking to reduce your gluten intake, the gluten-free crusts at Blaze Pizza do offer less of it, and you can also get them crispy. Simply ask that your gluten-free pizza be cooked "off the mat," and it'll come out with the same consistency as the regular stuff. But again, it likely won't be totally void of gluten.

Pizza and beer is about as time-honored a food tradition as movies and popcorn, and most Blaze Pizza locations have extensive beer menus featuring a wide variety of suds, both local and international. But what goes even better with pizza, especially in warmer weather? A shandy, obviously.

In the case that your neighborhood Blaze carries a wheat beer, Blaze Pizza co-founder and executive chef Brad Kent told Mashed about a cool hack to make your own shandy during your next trip to the pizza joint, even when one's not on the menu. Blaze Pizza's beverage section carries a special blood orange lemonade, which is also one of the chain's signature drinks. Kent says that when you mix the blood orange lemonade with your favorite wheat beer, it makes for a pretty solid DIY shandy. 

As an added bonus to this make-your-own shandy, mixing your beer with lemonade makes your beer last even longer. So the next time you're at Blaze Pizza on a hot summer day, don't be afraid to mix it up.

Blaze Pizza has a number of options for vegans who want to enjoy some pizza, and that doesn't mean they have to order a pizza with no cheese. In facet, the company's vegan pizza was featured in a highly complimentary write up from PETA, in which the animal rights organization lauded the pie with meat-free chorizo, vegan pizza crust, dairy-free cheese, peppers and basil. And while Blaze Pizza is right in line with the times by offering vegan options, this is hardly a hack: A quick look at Blaze's menu shows all the vegan stuff, as plain as day. 

What you won't find on the menu, however, is the vegan version of Blaze's popular cheesy bread, although it does exist. That same PETA story included an Instagram post from the New England Vegans account, which said, "Imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized that @blazepizza now offers VEGAN CHEESY BREAD! " The group went on to tell the world the cheesy bread was only $4.95, but you do have to ask for it as a special order, since, again, it's not on the menu.

Interestingly, Alfredo sauce, or at least the creamy, herby kind we know in America, doesn't technically come from Italy. According to HuffPost, the legend of the dish traces back to about 1914 at a restaurant called Villa della Scrofa in Rome. The restaurant's owner, Alfredo di Lelio, made a simple pasta dish of noodles, butter, and parmesan to help ease the nausea of his pregnant wife, Ines. Di Lelio then put the dish on the menu, and the restaurant eventually became a hit, attracting Hollywood types and tourists until the owner sold the place in 1943. In 1977, di Lelio moved to the United States and opened another Alfredo's in Manhattan, where he created the heavy, white sauce version we know today.

While in Italy, it's actually hard to find Alfredo sauce, as HuffPost reports, but in America it's so ubiquitous it can serve as a legitimate pizza base. Blaze Pizza offers it as part of the chain's White Top pizza, which features a creamy, Alfredo-style sauce along with bacon, garlic, and oregano. But if you want to maximize the flavor profile of this pizza, Kent told us you should ask your pizza maker to put some Alfredo-style sauce on top –before it goes in the oven.

During the height of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, Blaze Pizza introduced a DIY pizza kit so people at home could make their pizza in much the same way it's made in the restaurants. But of course, unless you've got a 900-degree oven in your kitchen, it would be hard to duplicate the real thing. However, the DIY pizza package does include crust, pre-measured portions of sauce, cheese, toppings, and most importantly, directions for what to do.

What those directions don't include, however, are instructions on how to make that DIY pizza kit into a DIY calzone kit. Blaze Pizza co-founder and executive chef Brad Kent told Mashed it's actually as simple as folding the dough over and putting it in your home oven. This will make for an 11-inch diameter calzone, but you'll need to furnish your own ricotta if you want to make them the traditional way. 

LeBron James is a significant stakeholder in Blaze Pizza. The basketball star and entrepreneur owns at least $35 million worth of the franchise, according to ESPN, and that's about 10 percent of the company's total value. And even though, according to his Instagram, LeBron dines most often on chicken and salads from his private chef, the four-time NBA champ has a special order at Blaze Pizza as well.

As you can see in his Facebook pages, LeBron's Blaze Pizza order can be quite loaded. It includes high-rise dough, spicy red sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, grilled chicken, turkey meatballs, banana peppers, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, green peppers, kalamata onions, red onions, spinach, sea salt, oregano, arugula, and an olive oil drizzle. Add an arugula and fruit salad and a s'mores pie, and maybe you too can have the proper nutrition to win titles for three different teams.