Place the pizza in the air fryer basket. Lightly spray the top of pizza so that the toppings don't burn. Air Fry at 380°F/195°C for about 6-10 minutes or until cooked to your desired crispness. Start cooking for about 6 minutes first.
Cover with foil.
Place in the center of your air fryer basket or rack(s). Use a square of aluminum foil (fold it in half as needed to fit into your air fryer) over the pizza to prevent it from burning.
The fan ensures the hot air is circulated, whilst the bottom element assists with crisping the base and the top element browning the cheese and cooking toppings. – Place the pizza base directly on the bottom rack (with no tray or pizza stone) when using fan assist.
The bottom oven rack is great for crust breads and pizzas…
baked goods that you want to intensely brown on the bottom. The top oven rack is great for things you'd like a crusty brown top on… things like pies and casseroles.
With a fan oven, the temperature remains stable throughout, meaning that food can be placed anywhere in the oven without risk of burning or undercooking.
Browning the bottom crust
If your air fryer doesn't have a bottom heating element, your pizza's bottom crust will need help browning. Thin-crust pizzas can be flipped before adding their toppings (see above), transferring their browned top crust to the bottom: problem solved!
An air fryer is simply a small oven that runs on convection heat. The heat is circulated around a tight space by a powerful fan that lies just below or behind the heating element. Just as in a standard oven, it is perfectly safe to use aluminum foil in the air fryer.
Results are always soggy, half cooked pizza dough. The concept of the air fryer is to cook food hot and fast, but if you don't pre-cook the dough first then you get soggy crusts. So we've figured out the issue and learn that air frying the raw dough first then adding the toppings is WAY better.
Air fry pizza for 7 minutes at 370 degrees Fahrenheit until you see a golden brown crispy crust and the cheese has melted. Top with extra basil, cheese, and red pepper flakes just before serving to add additional flavor.
Place cold pizza slices of pizza in a single layer in the air fryer basket. Air fry the pizza at 380 degrees F for 3-4 minutes cooking time, until you have hot pizza with a crispy crust and melted gooey cheese.
As a bonus air frying frozen pizza always gives you a nice crispy pizza crust. No more soggy freezer pizzas in this house! Air fryers are also ideal to cook frozen mini pizza or frozen French bread pizza, as you don't have to wait for the oven to heat up just so you can cook a quick snack.
An air fryer basket within the 6- to 10-quart size range will provide enough room to roast a whole chicken, a whole pizza and pounds of finger foods.
Using the air fryer to make frozen pizza works best for small, personal-sized pizzas. Large round pizzas simply won't fit in a standard air fryer basket. Oven-style air fryers will be able to cook larger pizzas than basket-style ones.
Make sure the pizza rolls are in a single layer.
If there are too many pizza rolls close together, they won't get crispy. If you're making more than 20 pizza rolls at one time, just cook them in batches. No need for cooking spray - the air fryer gets them perfectly crispy.
Potential drawbacks of using foil in an air fryer
Foil can block airflow: when using foil in your air fryer, make sure you are not blocking airflow. It's designed to cook with hot air flowing up and around your food. If the foil blocks the air from circulating, your food will not cook as intended.
The size of the air fryer basket will determine how many rashers you can cook at one time. Set the air fryer to 200C and cook streaky bacon rashers for 6-10 mins – just-cooked bacon will take 6 mins, but crispier bacon will take 9-10 mins.
Only put a layer of foil in the bottom of the air fryer basket where your food sits, not on the bottom of the air fryer itself. Air fryers work by circulating hot air, which originates at the bottom of the fryer. Lining it with foil can constrict the air flow and your food won't cook properly.
Your oven is hottest around its periphery: sides, bottom, and top. The closer you get to those metal walls, the hotter the air. Thus anything baked towards the periphery will bake and brown more quickly than anything baked in the center of the oven.
To make those everyday spills even easier to wipe up, Cohen recommends catching crumbs and splatters before they hit the bottom of your oven. He recommends putting a drip tray or empty cookie sheet on the bottom to make it easier to scrub, or just adding a disposable oven liner.