Too hot for the oven

Can you smell that?  Awww... the grill is going again. It's been way too hot to cook inside, surprising for Minnesota, but we've been hit with a few streaks of the 90's. I know it's not as hot as where some of you live, just remember it gets -40* or more below zero here in the winter too!   We've been finding lots of meals to make on the grill this summer.  Not only does it taste wonderful, it keeps the house cooler too.  And who doesn't love pizza right?  I think we could eat pizza three times a week and never get sick of it.  Last summer we enjoyed taking the freezer pizzas and placing them on our pizza stone on the grill.  Really if you've never had grilled pizza you need to.  It's AMAZING!  We took the pizza stone inside for winter and used it once in the oven, and that was one too many times.  It ended up shattering, thankfully not until I took it out of the oven.  If you've ever bought one, they're not cheap so it wasn't something we ran out and replaced right away.  But we've missed grilled pizza this summer and I knew there had to be a way to make it without the stone.  I was doing some digging into how when I thought about our pizza pan.  We have one with the holes on the bottom I thought we could just place that on the grill.  And then I found it.  A mouth watering picture of grilled pizza with the delicious looking grill lines on the crust. I knew I wanted to make 'THAT' kind of grilled pizza.  A little more digging and comparing different techinques and we were ready to give it a try. 

So where do you start?  

First start with the homemade pizza crust recipe that I love so much. Really pizza crust in under 15 is unbelievable!  I love how it tastes too.  Mix it up and let it rise.  Then divide the dough into 4 equal parts.  Take your trusty dough roller or just flatten it out with your hands.  If you're a daredevil and have just washed your floors, give it a toss in the air and pretend you're in a fancy pizzeria!  Once you get your dough ball rolled out, place it on a greased cookie sheet.  I added cornmeal to the one in the picture to help get the dough off the pan when I needed it, but soon realized it came off just fine with the greased pan so feel free to skip that step!

Next gather your toppings. 

You'll need some sauce, cheese and a dish of olive oil.  The rest is up to you for what to add.  The kids wanted just pepperoni.  Mr. Bacon and I added some fresh sliced mushrooms and black olives to ours. 

Now it's time to head out to the grill!  Heat your grill to med. heat.  Mr. Bacon said he heated ours to about 375* give or take.  I don't think I'd heat hotter than this temp, lower is fine, it will just take a bit longer to cook the pizza.  Next take your olive oil and add a bit to your dough.  Spread it around. You want to make sure you coat it enough so it doesn't stick to the grill, but not enough so the oil is dripping off the dough. 

    

Once the dough is oiled, it's time to put it on the hot grill.  Gently pick up the dough. Be careful because it will stretch out. Misshapen dough is ok!  But dough with holes are super thin spots just makes it not look as pretty!  It also can make the dough burn.  Place the dough on the grill oiled side down. 

Close the lid of the grill.  After about 3-4 minutes, take a peak at your dough. When you start to see it bubble it's time to flip!  Now there is a trick to flipping the dough.  We tested out grill tongs, it didn't work.  They had too sharp of  'teeth' on the one's we tried and it just tore the dough apart.  Instead we opted to use our gigantic spatula.  It came with the pizza stone when I bought it.  It works wonderful.  Either will do the trick to flip the dough if you are careful.  If you only have tongs, try to find ones without sharp 'teeth'. 

 

 All flipped... OH look at those grill marks! (Sorry for the corner of the spatula, I blame Mr. Bacon!)

 

 Next toss on the toppings.  This step we found you want to work fast for.  For one because these pizzas cook fast, but mainly because you are sticking your hands into hot 375* heat!  Spread on some pizza sauce, add the other goodies and top it with cheese, then close the lid again. 

 

 After another 3-4 minutes take a peek at the pizza's.  At this point you are just wanting the cheese to melt.  Once it looks ooey, gooey and delicious, it's time to scoop it off the grill!  See our big pizza scoop! 

  Take it inside, let it cool for a few minutes and cut into slices. I like to top mine at this point with some fresh grated Parmesan cheese!  It's the perfect pizza dinner! 

 

It's the perfect pizza dinner! I hope you enjoy yours as much as we did ours!