Pizza Spectacular

For my birthday I was the happy recipient of a VillaWare Stainless-Steel Pizza Grill. For some time I have been making pizza on the grill as well as in the oven without the benefit of any pizza stone. Overall, I was quite happy with the results but the pizza monster inside of me always wanted to try a pizza stone.

The challenge was trying a pizza stone on a grill. Technically speaking, one can not use a baking stone directly on an open flame. Not sure if this is folk lore or the actual truth but I read it on the internet and as we all know if it is on the internet, it must be true.

A combo pizza stone and rack seemed to be the way to go and the reviews have always been positive for the VillaWare product. Amazon has it for a great price and with my Amazon Prime membership I got it in two days for free shipping. Hard to shake a pizza crust at that!

We decided to make two pizzas, a cheese pizza for the sou chef and a sort of margarita pizza for us.

The sou chef did her usual great job of assembling the pizza-

a little bit of sauce

a little bit of cheese

even more cheese

then onto the Pizza Grill

for some tasty results

Our pizza was equally as tasty

Fresh tomatoes from Volante Farms, mozzarella from Maplebrook Farm (you can buy it at Roche Brothers, Sudbury Farms and Whole Foods and basil from our 'garden'

So how were the results? The sou chef has proclaimed that it was the best pizza ever and she now only wants to eat daddy's bar-b-que pizza. I liked the crust that the pizza stone created. The built in thermometer was very handy as my Weber one has died a slow death some time ago.

What are my complaints? For starters the thing needs to heat up for about 20 minutes, this combined with any additional grilling sucks a lot of LP out of the gas tank. The other two 'issues' is that the Pizza grill takes up a lot of space on my Weber. Not the grills fault but of course now I need a bigger grill and finally, if you make pizza as an appetizer the questions of where one puts a wicked hot pizza grill and frame is a bit of an issue.

For less then seventy five dollars with free shipping this was a great deal in my mind.

Pizzalicious

Pizza is a big favorite in our house. While I prefer to make it on the grill lately the weather has not been cooperating and we can make due utilizing the broiler in the electric oven.


There are a variety of ways to make pizza, pizza dough, pizza sauce, you get the idea. That is one of the things that makes pizza so versatile.

To mix things up we went with three pizzas on two pizza doughs (one was a half-half). A plane cheese for the sou chef and a half pesto chicken - half ricotta pizza for us. If you are interested in the basic method we use to make pizza you can take a look at this prior post. For a more in-depth on how to make pizza dough, I would suggest either clicking over to Stephencooks or to Simply Recipes. Both have really good sections on pizza dough and Stephen has even won a blog award from Slahfood for one of his pizzas. How cool is that?

Combo Action pizzas-

-Pizza dough cut into two balls for two even pizzas
-Breaded chicken (will post next week) or store bought breaded chicken
-Ricotta
-Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes with Italian Herbs
-Cheese (we went with a three cheese blend)
-Seasoning - basil, thyme, oregano, fennel
-Amore Pesto Paste

needs more time under the broiler

nice contrast between the two sides

Yummy, starting to brown and get all gooey and melted

One of the many great things about pizza is that it is an excellent way to engage our 4 year old in the kitchen. I could of made the pesto from scratch, and started with whole tomatoes then crushed them down. With mid week meals such as this, time is of the essence so short cuts are not only much appreciated, they are encouraged.

Pizza Pizza

It is a toss up between popcorn and pizza for which food I could eat everyday. As any good parent should I am trying to pass my food cravings along so I have a partner in crime. Several weeks ago we decided to make some pizza at home.

My usual method is to make the pizza on the grill outside. One does not need a pizza stone or anything fancy like that and the pizza is fantastic. I was reluctant to try it inside since the results have usually been so so , but I also wanted something we could do together.

We bought ready made pizza dough. As you can see below my able bodied assistant was able to get right into rolling out the dough. Most grocery stores have bags of pizza dough in the bakery section. The downside is that ready made dough is usually harder to work with since it has been worked over a bit. The upside is you can get to work right away which with kids is the key.

I put some flour on the counter top and she was able to start rolling out the pizza. Once we got the shape we wanted the next step was to bake one side of the pizza.

To do this I had my sous chef dust a cookie tray with some corn meal,



then we put the pizza dough on the cookie sheet on the top rack under the broiler.


and we broiled it until one side was nice and brown and cooked.



This will become the bottom or no-topping side of the pizza. From here on out it is a matter of what toppings you would like on your pizza. We went with half cheese and half meatball for the pizza.


A little bit of sauce-

A little bit of cheese-


A few meatballs and some more cheese-



Back under the broiler right on the rack until the toppings were melted.

Yummy!

The whole thing took about 30 minutes and it was really something that the whole family could do. I would do and have done it again several times.