Recently, Hoot came up with a great idea; let’s grill some pizza! It’s hot here in these days, and heating up the house with the stove or oven doesn’t sound great…but standing outside in the heat over a 400 degree grill sounds terrific! 😉 After a bit of googling and some gathering at Trader Joe’s we were ready! Well, not quite yet…to add to the experience, I (Annie) wanted to try doing a cauliflower crust pizza (in the oven, defeating my indoor heat thing above) along with the grilled stuff. Sound weird? Maybe…but it was great!
Okay, so we used Trader Joe’s ready-made pizza crust and just sort of free-formed a couple of dough pies. Meanwhile, I got the cauliflower recipe from over here and had that going on the side. One of the pizzas was red sauce, pepperoni, and black olives with regular and smoked mozzarella. The other was pesto with garlic chicken, pine nuts, cherry tomatoes and regular mozzarella. I did the cauliflower pizza half and half.
We’re still working on our technique for the grilled pizza, as it takes a little practice and confidence. If you’re up to giving either pizza a shot, and I highly recommend that you do, here’s some of our lessons learned to help you have a superb experience of your own:
– Keep the dough a little thick when you’re making the pies. It stand up better on the grill.
– Brush one side of the dough with olive oil, and start with that side down on the grill. Once it starts to set up and puff a little, pull it off onto a cookie sheet. Brush the uncooked side with olive oil and flip it over. Now you’re all set to put your toppings on the cooked side and then throw the uncooked side down on the grill.
– We found that using a cookie sheet to kind of help move the pizzas around and off and on the grill was helpful.
– Once you put the pizza back on the grill, cover it so the toppings and cheese get all bubbly and delicious while the bottom crust gets cooked.
– For the cauliflower crust, I followed the recipe pretty much to a ‘t’ but the standout is that you need to be sure and strain the hell out of the cauliflower before mixing the other ingredients in. I did this with a dish towel and twisted it til my hands hurt. You’d be surprised how much water is in that thing!
So there you go..our crazy, delicious pizza adventure in a nutshell. Get out there and grill you up some yourself! Oh, and let us know what you like on your pizza!!

we love grilled pizza! Mike is a huge pizza fiend I pretty much make it every Sunday and once we get to grilling season it’s usually a grilled pizza. I make the dough using a little less east than a typical though. And yes you are correct it does take a little practice to get the grilling aspect of it perfect but in this case practice makes yummy!