Pizza grillin' time

Our newest food cooked on the grill is pizza. It has become a yummy adventure! I made a shopping run for a pizza peel to ease the transferring of pizzas and it has made all the difference. I love wood fired brick oven pizza and wanted that taste at home. We came close using these directions from Martha Stewart Living May 2009. Chris Bianco has a pizza place in downtown Phoenix which I understand has a two hour wait in line for a taste of his handmade pizzas. I adapted my grilled pizzas from the directions he shared with Martha for use in a regular oven. I put the pizza stone directly on the rack in our gas grill instead and heated it up to 500 degrees before sliding in the pizza off the pizza peel and baking it for about 12 minutes. I especially like the Margherita style with heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil from my garden.

This month's Sunset magazine included these directions for actually making the crusts right on a rack in the gas grill. I haven't tried this yet, but I can see it making things go faster when your guests are waiting for pizza. (I've considered buying another pizza stone so I could do two pizzas at a time in our grill.) You could make the half baked crusts ahead of time and then put the toppings on and finish cooking later and in a shorter amount of time.

When just making a couple of pizzas, I often let the bread machine mix up my pizza dough. When I'm cooking for a crowd, I use the Bosch. TJ, our pizza man, loved these pizzas with just cheese (like always) but declared them delicious and proceeded to eat a couple all by himself!