If you like pizza (and who doesn’t!), then you really need to try grilled pizza.  Not only does it keep you from heating up your house from your oven, but the pizzas cooked on a grill have a whole different taste—more like the ones in the fire-baked ovens in pizzerias.

And grilling pizzas isn’t that difficult!  It seems like it would be, but once you try, you’ll find that you love the texture and flavor of the crust and it will be a big hit among your family and friends!

Here are some tips to get you going:

Dough
You can use any pizza dough.  I make mine in my bread machine, but you could make it from a commercial mix.  Sometimes raw pizza dough is sold over the counter in the bakery section of your grocery store; I’ve even heard that some pizza places might even sell it to you.  Or you can make your own from scratch from a recipe.  Lots of choices.   As I said, I make mine in my bread machine, so if you have a machine, check the recipe book that came with it, and try that one.

Pizza Sauce
Commercial bought sauce is obviously the easiest, but you can make your own also. You can even make your own sauce from the grill if you want to try something novel.  Grill about 6 tomatoes, slightly charring them.  Then chop the tomatoes into ½” pieces and mix with a little olive oil, minced garlic,basil, oregano,  and salt and pepper.

Toppings
Use your favorite toppings.  Just make sure that they are room temperature or that you have slightly sautéed or cooked them ahead of time.  There isn’t an overhead heat source in your grill—you’ll just get the heat reflection off the top of the grill, so it may take longer to cook or heat through the toppings.  You can speed that up by cutting things a little smaller, making sure they are room temperature, or even sautéing them before adding to your grilled pizza.

The How To
Make your pizza dough, roll out to a circle (or whatever shape you want)and then put onto either a pizza peel or rimless cookie or pizza sheet.  It will help if you sprinkle corn meal on the sheet first.  The corn meal acts like little ball bearings to help slide the pizza dough from the peel or cookie sheet onto your grill.  Don’t make a rim on the rolled out pizza.  That will just get in the way when you flip the pizza over on the grill.

Get the grill nice a hot, then brush the grate with a little olive oil. Slide the pizza dough on the grill and cook for 1-3 minutes.  Don’t cook it too long!  While that side is cooking, brush the top side with a little olive oil.  Puncture any bubbles that form.  After that side is done, use tongs to pull onto the peel or cookie sheet and flip over to cook the other side.

Now you have to work fast.  Brush the side that was just cooked with a little olive oil.  Then add cheese, sauce and toppings.  Close the lid so that the toppings get heated and the cheese melted. Cook another 2-3 minutes.  When done, use the tongs to pull the pizza onto the pizza peel, cut, and serve!

You can even do personal pizzas like this and allow each person to put on their own toppings.  If you make the pizzas a little smaller, you can have a couple going at once on the grill.

This is a pizza that I did this summer with grilled vegetables, tomato slices, Canadian bacon and cheese.  I sliced the some red onions and grilled them, along with some zucchini slices on the grill and then cut up and added to the pizza.  I didn't use any sauce, but just sliced some tomatoes and put on the crust.  For some reason, I forgot to take a picture after it was all done, but it was pretty tasty!

I’ve got some other variations to try this summer, so look for that!

I've even heard that store bought frozen pizzas work well and make them taste better on the grill, but haven't tried that one yet.

Have you cooked pizza on the grill?  Give me your tips and thoughts in the comments below.