Pizza….. Just thinking about it brings a sense of happiness!!! Who does not enjoy some version of pizza. I love bbqing them at any time of year. While we often do our pizzas entirely from scratch, I don’t always have enough time to dedicate to a hand-kneaded crust. Fortunately, I have found an alternative that works very well. Trader Joe’s has both an organic pizza crust and a gluten-free pizza crust.
We do a vegan-version of pizza and numerous more traditional versions. The options, of course, are only limited by your imagination. For the vegan pizza, we do olive oil infused with a couple cloves of garlic (or a thin layer of Rao marinara sauce), followed by onions, mushrooms, zucchini, asparagus and black olives. For the more traditional, one of our favs is a bbq chicken version. We use Kinder’s organic bbq sauce followed by onions, cooked and chopped chicken breast or thighs, crumbled bacon, black olives and mozzarella cheese. I also love a good Margarita Pizza….. I use either infused olive oil or Rao marinara sauce, sliced tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. Once cooked, I add basil and lots of red pepper!! So simple and quick. I often will prepare all the toppings and then let friends and family create their own. I have noticed just about everyone enjoys creating a personal masterpiece. Pizzas typically take about 12-14 mins to cook.
For a truly fabulous crust, you need to make sure your stone has been amply heated up. Put it on your bbq when you turn it on. The great thing about using a bbq for pizzas is you can get the stone really hot. We heat ours up to about 450/475.
Also, we make our pizzas right on the paddle (. When I use the premade crusts, there is no need to do any dusting of cornmeal or flour. Just put the crust on the paddle, add your infused oil or sauce, ingredients and then slide it directly onto the stone. Once the pizza is cooked, move it from the stone back onto your paddle, cool slightly, cut and serve. I purchased both pizza paddles and pizza stones from Amazon. My newer pizza stones (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JRIFMVC?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details) actually have a ceramic top coating so they clean up easily.
Enjoy…