How To Turn Trader Joe's Pizza Dough Into The Easiest Cheesy Side Dish

Trader Joe's is famous for taking the grunt work out of everyday meals by providing a wealth of pre-made frozen products, from Indian meals to frozen pizzas. Trader Joe's pizza dough may not be a meal in and of itself, but its versatility knows no bounds. One of the easiest ways to utilize Trader Joe's pizza dough is by turning it into cheese sticks.

Trader Joe's frozen pizza dough is essentially an all-purpose dough that you can shape into anything and pair with any flavor. To that effect, we've cut and twisted T.J.'s pizza dough into buttery soft pretzels, spread cinnamon-sugar butter over them to roll into cinnamon rolls, and even transformed it into focaccia with the help of olive oil and herbs. But all of these transformations require much more work than cheese bread, which is even easier to make than the intended pizza because there's no sauce or extra toppings involved.

To make cheese bread, simply roll thawed Trader Joe's pizza dough with a rolling pin into before transferring it to a baking pan. Brush the dough with seasoned butter or olive oil, then sprinkle generously with parmesan and mozzarella and slide the pan into a preheated 425 Fahrenheit oven to bake for between 8 and 12 minutes. When you pull the bubbly cheesy bread out of the oven, use a pizza cutter or even a pair of scissors to cut them into sticks.

Cheese sticks are the easy side dish you can make with Trader Joe's frozen pizza dough in under 20 minutes. It's also totally customizable, so you can change the cheese and seasonings to fit the cuisine you have in mind. Your seasoned butter might include garlic powder, oregano, salt, and pepper for Italian cheese sticks to dip into store-bought marinara or serve alongside minestrone soup. But you can swap the seasoning for Zaa'tar and sumac infused olive oil to pair with a light sprinkling of feta cheese for a more Mediterranean-style cheese bread. These would make a great side for a Greek salad or as a mezze to dip into hummus, tzatziki, or babaganoush.

For a cheesy breakfast dish, Trader Joe's famous everything but the bagel seasoning is the perfect all-in-one seasoning to stir into butter and sprinkle with a sharp, bold cheddar cheese or a creamy, tangy goat cheese. Bagel-flavored cheese sticks are the perfect dipping bread to soak up the tomato sauce in this recipe for fire-roasted shakshuka.

Don't have enough cheese on hand, but still want a restaurant worthy side dish? Try making TJ's frozen pizza dough into bread sticks. Premade dough would make this easy garlic and herb breadsticks recipe even easier. Another idea would be to slather our favorite Trader Joe's dipping sauce, the garlic spread, over the dough before baking it to create creamy garlic bread sticks with just two ingredients.