Pizza meets grill!
I know, this is a blog about art. What is a pizza recipe doing here?! I figure, art is everywhere. Artists have got to eat, right? I enjoy cooking and making the food look appealing is important. Sometimes, we see beauty in the everyday like a golden brown cheese topped pizza. There's nothing like a homemade pizza!
I get adventurous from time to time. It's worth the risk. Experiments like this make for great family time, too. One of our favorite weekend meals is pizza with our favorite toppings. Recently, I was thinking on what to make for our family. It was a hot day and I didn't want to use the oven. With what I had on hand and the spinach in the garden, I wanted to attempt pizza on the grill. We had not tried this before. Ever. I knew there was a chance it may not turn out well. We decided to try anyway. It works and the pizza tastes like it came from a stone oven at a pizzeria. I have a tried-and-true pizza dough recipe and I'm happy to share! The dough takes no time to mix up and is kneaded well by the mixer. While the dough rests, I open a few cans and marinara is soon warming on the stove. I really don't have a recipe for the marinara. I can share my method but it's not exact in any way. Let's get started!
I get adventurous from time to time. It's worth the risk. Experiments like this make for great family time, too. One of our favorite weekend meals is pizza with our favorite toppings. Recently, I was thinking on what to make for our family. It was a hot day and I didn't want to use the oven. With what I had on hand and the spinach in the garden, I wanted to attempt pizza on the grill. We had not tried this before. Ever. I knew there was a chance it may not turn out well. We decided to try anyway. It works and the pizza tastes like it came from a stone oven at a pizzeria. I have a tried-and-true pizza dough recipe and I'm happy to share! The dough takes no time to mix up and is kneaded well by the mixer. While the dough rests, I open a few cans and marinara is soon warming on the stove. I really don't have a recipe for the marinara. I can share my method but it's not exact in any way. Let's get started!
It all began on a hot summer day...
I searched for tips on google to learn what would work best. After a bit of reading and video watching, I decided I'd like to use a pizza stone and parchment paper.
When I make pizza at home in my oven, I preheat the oven to 400 or 450 degrees Fahrenheit. To prepare to bake pizza in the oven, I turn a baking sheet upside down, lay a piece of parchment paper on top, sprinkle a bit of cornmeal and then transfer the stretched pizza dough to the top. That method works really great for us.
A great video (linked here) for preheating the pizza stone on the grill helped me get started. The video demonstrates preheating the grill and pizza stone. The pizza stone is placed on the grill. The heat is turned to low for 5 minutes, then medium for 5 minutes, and then finally high heat for 5 minutes. I think this is important to protect the pizza stone from cracking with quick temperature changes. I decided I'd like to use the parchment paper as a way of transferring the pizza to the pizza stone on the grill. After making four pizzas in this way, we believe the parchment paper protects the pizza crust from cooking too fast, preventing burning. I do not think the cornmeal is necessary for making the pizza on the grill.
