Fathead Dough is an easy low carb dough with tons of uses. We’ll show you how to make fat head dough with just 5 ingredients and make into Keto friendly pizza crust or bagel or cinnamon rolls … this dough does it all!
Fathead Dough is a blend of crispy, chewy amazing-ness wrapped in a low-carb bow. Seriously, the gift that keeps on giving. Because life without pizza, calzones, rolls and bagels is not O.K. even on a low carb or Keto diet. You don’t have to give up your favorite foods. Bonus, it’s SO easy!
Fathead Dough 101
We LOVE the versatility of this dough. It truly does cover so many culinary bases AND it legitimately tastes amazing.
What is fathead dough? This dough has become pretty well-known in the keto community over the past few years. To be honest I’m not sure how it was started or where it originated from but it’s genius. It’s a mixture of a few very simple and easy ingredients that when put together creates a decent dough texture and when baked pretty fantastic results! Can’t wait for you to try it.
What can you make with fathead dough? Pizza crust is our all-time favorite, because … pizza. But you also can make bagels, cinnamon rolls, bread sticks, calzones, tiny pizza rolls, fruit pizza, pigs in a blanket wrap and so much more.
Can you make fathead dough ahead of time? Yes, you can if you want to and store in the refrigerate for up to a week. You can also bake your dough ahead of time and keep it safely in the refrigerator for up to a week. This is great for making pizza topping choices on the go and changing it up during the week.
What does fathead dough taste like? This is a hard one apart from to say it tastes like you would expect a thin crust pizza crust/bread sticks/bagel to taste. The key is that the texture is perfection, making it hard to tell it’s low carb/keto friendly. The best recipes are the hardest to tell the difference with, in our opinion.
How to make perfect fathead dough
What you’ll need: Shredded Mozzarella (we find the pre-shredded packaged mozzarella works best), Almond Flour, Cream Cheese, Eggs and Salt.
We’ll go into more details below on how to get the dough perfect rolled out or molded into whatever you have in mind for this dough. The sky is the limit with this one TRULY.
Tips of getting the dough together: In a microwavable friendly bowl add cheese, almond flour and cream cheese. Microwave on high for 60 seconds. You’ll want to quickly stir just to the point it’s combined and the cheese should be getting to a point of melting a bit. (See photo below)
Now place back into the microwave for another 60 seconds, or until cheese is warm and fully melted. This is when you’ll add the egg and work the dough together. Be patient and keep folding the kneading the dough together. It will come together as long as the cheese is fully melted. So in case your microwave is a bit less powerful you’ll want to put back into the microwave for another 30 seconds or so just make sure the cheese is fully melted before adding the egg.
Oh, my, dough.
Dough has its pitfalls, some of which we can be of assistance with. It’s sticky. But have no fear.
- Plastic Wrap. This has got to me my ultimate favorite method when need to roll and work with this dough right now. It’s a quick clean-up and never sticks. The only downside to it for me lately is that it’s plastic. I’m beginning to become more and more aware of our plastic use… so see below for other options if you are on the same wavelength.
- Non-Stick Baking Paper. My second favorite is using nonstick baking paper.I’ve found when rolling out ONTO baking paper though it pushes the oils into the baking paper and can result in sticking to the crust after it cooks. It could be just our cheap baking paper we use but hence why we prefer the above method.
- Oil up. A little bit of oil on your fingers will make things so much easier. Just enough to create a thin barrier. You may have to lightly reapply depending on if you are making several pieces of your dough into something magical. (Like bagels.) You also can lightly oil your working surface.
- Dust it up. You can also use a little of the low carb flour like arrowroot to keep from sticking. We don’t necessarily favor this method because it adds flour and can mess with consistency, but if it’s how you roll we’re not going to stand in your way.
- Chill out. Yup, chilled dough is easier to work with and by nature, not as sticky. It’s when it starts to warm up that there becomes an issue.
HOW MANY NET CARBS IN OUR FATHEAD DOUGH?
This really depends on WHAT you end up making this dough into. The entire dough recipe is 14 Net Carbs. So if you made pizza out of this or 4 bagels you’d split the carbs into whatever the amount you make it out of.
Stay Tuned: We’ll be sharing our favorite recipes with this dough in the coming weeks. 🙂
If you are new to this Low Carb/Keto lifestyle and are unsure what we are talking about please feel free to read up more on Net Carbs. Or start at our Low Carb & Keto 101 Starter Page.
Other recipes you might like:
Fathead Dough Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 3/4 cup almond flour
- 2 Tablespoons cream cheese
- 1 whole egg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
- In a microwavable friendly bowl add cheese, almond flour and cream cheese. Microwave on high for 60 seconds.
- Stir until slightly combined and place back into the microwave for another 60 seconds, or until cheese is warm and melted.
- Add egg and large pinch of salt. Stir dough together until it forms a ball and egg is mixed in. Allow dough to sit for 15 minutes. Use for whatever you have in mind! Pizza, Bagels, Cinnamon Rolls etc.
Love it
Stupid question. Do you think you could make dumplings for chicken and dumplings with this?
I wouldn’t equate this as a stupid question. 🙂 It’s an interesting idea for sure! I haven’t tried it myself but if you do let us know the results!
I mistakenly used another recipe didn’t like it won’t do that again live and learn? love your recipe thanks ?
What if I don’t have a microwave? Can I melt the cheese in a double boiler?
Yes definitely should work
I love this recipe. I have made this several times and my family really likes it. My husband who is not a big Keto fan has asked for it a couple of times. My son who has vision problems is making this today for his Blind cooking class. Thanks for sharing your recipe.
It says that the nutritional information is for 1 dough ball. This cant’s be right. It must be for the entire recipe.
Correct. It is the entire dough ball which is the entire recipe.
Yummmm! Turned out AWESOME!
I’ve used this dough for pizza about 3 times now and I love it!!!! Now I can have pizza and now worry about too many carbs – yay!!! Next thing I’m trying is bagels!😊
I made it and followed the directions exactly—I also used the conversation chart and my dough is super sticky. Is it the cream cheese that would do that if I added too much? I don’t know what else it would be.
Letting the dough sit for about 5minutes is my guess… It will harden up a bit more and make rolling it out a bit more easy. It is sticky though to an extent so you that is why we recommend using cling film or parchment paper like with our Fatdough Pizza Crust.
i also say letting the dough set for a few minutes to harden up then roll out between parchment papers.
I made this today and it was super easy and delicious. Will definitely keep this as my go to dough recipe. Thanks for sharing.
can this be used to make spaetzle ?
I’m not sure as I haven’t tried it. But perhaps someone in our community can advise who might of tried it.
I think I used too much cream cheese. The package I used was marked in ounces, not tablespoons. The conversion chart I used said 2 ounces to a tablespoon, so I wound up adding most of the 8 ounce block. Next time I guess I’ll let it soften a bit and use an actual tablespoon to scoop it out.
I personally have found that there is quite a bit of leeway when it comes to the cream cheese. I personally generally am not super exact.. I scoop and eyeball a tablespoon out lol My husband is the exact type of person though so I know it can go either way and still with good results LOL.
2 Tablespoons = 1 ounce
Can you make this pizza dough and freeze it?
Downside of freezing cheeses is that depending on the cheese and depending on how it is defrosted cheese can come out a little crumbly.
You may be able to get away with it by making, rolling is out into the pizza round and then freezing that way. Then when you want to use it you can simply add it to the oven frozen and cook that way (do be sure to cook longer to compensate since it will be frozen). THAT way I can see potentially working.
Alternatively, you could pre-bake the pizza dough itself, then freeze that. When ready to make the actual pizza, you can simply top it (while frozen) and bake for about 15-20 minutes.
Better idea. 🙂
Tried using this for pizza dough and it stuck to the pan and only got crispy around edges even though I prebaked it before toppings were added. Disappointed in the crispiness but the flavor was delicious.
It sounds like perhaps a nonstick parchment paper might be your friend in this case. We discuss it in detail about how to bake pizza with this dough. And we do recommend nonstick parchment paper and flipping it halfway. We even got a video showing you so be sure to check that out. It’s our go-to Friday night pizza .. yes.. every single Friday 😉 So don’t give up and be sure to check out the pizza recipe.
I am doing this recipe now, but my shredded cheese for 1 1/2 cup is 120g not 170. I use metric. I don’t want to have too little or too much cheese. Any advice?
I actually make this recipe with metric myself. I actually find this dough WAY easier to make by weight – just pour it into a bowl thats on the scale. It is definitely 170grams of cheese and 85grams of almond flour lol I have it memorized I make it every Friday. ? You can also always click the metric tab at/below the ingredients that will convert the recipes to metric as well.
Can you sub almond flour for coconut flour?
Not with this recipe. It is something we can look into recipe developing though if there seems to be a need for it.
Do you think you could use this dough for beirocks (dough stuffed with a cooked cabbage/hamburger mixture)?
It’s actually we’ve been experimenting with. We’ve been working on calzones with it too and overall the results are decent! MY only thing is it seems you really need to bake extra long for the bottom which when we made our calzone we made it extra large and was kind of difficult to flip.. so I would 100% give it a try.
These will definitely work for bedrocks (runzas where I’m from)! Add 1/4 tsp xanthan gum to give the dough greater stability when you pay it out and fill it. You can also add 1/2 tsp baking powder to make the bread fluffier. I think I baked mine for 20-25 minutes at 350. They also freeze well.
Hi there, I’m not seeing how long you bake this for? Thank you so much!
Generally it is about 10 minutes but that does depend on what you are trying to make a bit 🙂 This was our general post about fathead dough. It does depend on what exactly you are trying to make – our cinnamon rolls for example use fathead dough but with a little different version and bake time required 🙂
Wow is there really over 1000 calories in this?
In the ENTIRE dough ball yes. Almond flour is not low in calories but it is packed with fantastic fiber and fats that is needed in this diet. You will be most likely dividing this dough into 8-10 as well depending on what you are making with it so do keep that in mind. 🙂