Fire roasted pizza...at home!

 Tonight was a beautiful night to have supper on the deck... We tried something new--grilled pizza. Dontcha love it when you try something and it turns out amazing the very first time? I sure do! Tonight was one of those nights, so I thought I'd share my inspiration with you because pizza on the grill is definitely a new family tradition at the Amundson's! Here's a little tutorial...  Setup: Start by placing your stone on the cold grill and heating it as you would in the oven: 

(By the way--this is actually an "after" picture since I forgot to take a before one.  This is what your stone will look like after the intense heat and smoke.  I happen to like the rustic charm--but if you're attached to your pretty brown seasoning then you might want to get a separate stone for grilling...) I tried to maintain around 550* on the grill thermometer (the grate and stone were much hotter, I'm sure).  Our infrared grill can exceed 700*--if yours isn't that hot, it should still work, but will take a little longer to cook the pizza. 

 Finally, to give a touch of that smoke-kissed, fire-roasted flavor, I put a couple of wood pieces on.  Our grill is designed for easy smoking, but I figured out how to do it just fine on our old grill, too.  You can put a wood chunk right on the grate--or even right on the flavor bar/briquettes.  I wanted quick smoke/short duration so I didn't soak the wood. 

 Cooking: So, once you have a hot, smoking grill, you cook the pizza very much like you would on a stone.  We did small-ish pizzas for our first attempt since they were easier to manage getting on and off of the stone.

Rather than rolling/shaping the dough, I went for a "rustic" look, so I just stretched the dough by hand.  Most of our pizzas were sort of oval.

Tonight, we did barbeque chicken pizza.  I had previously seasoned/grilled some chicken tenderloins and chopped them.  We added the toppings in this order:  Trader Joe's barbeque sauce, freshly grated mozzarella cheese, bacon, chicken, onions and sweet freezer corn.  After cooking, we drizzled the pizza with a raspberry sauce that I made (which was basically seedless raspberry jam, a splash of balsamic vinegar, touch of oil, and a couple pinches of cayenne pepper). 

 

Mmm...

The options are endless.  We just used a basic homemade crust...

The crust was what made this pizza so amazing.  There's nothing special about my crust--any crust would do (generously coated with cornmeal to prevent sticking).  The crust was crisp and a touch smoky on the bottom, but the top was so soft and bubbled.  It will be hard to make homemade pizza in the oven again!

The pizza only took 5-7 minutes on our grill.  I removed it when it started to brown on the bottom, and the toppings were heated through.  It was very hot off the grill.

Introducing our "little chef":

I'm already planning to get a bigger stone so that we can do this for company.  They sell rectangular stones that would cook 2-3 of these pizzas at once.  I'm picturing "do it yourself" wood-fired pizza. 

Want to come for a pizza party?  :-)