Pizza on the Grill

In the summertime, I really enjoy grilling pizza outside. It’s easy and it doesn’t heat up the house. All you really need to get started is a big piece of fresh pizza dough and something to pile on top. Topping combinations for grilled pizza are a little tricky, because where you might opt for cheese, sausage and tomato sauce over and over again on an oven-baked pie, grilled pizzas don’t hold up well to a ton of saucy, oozing toppings. I’ve found that grilled pizzas do best with fewer toppings. This means that some of the old standbys are best saved for traditional baked pizzas, and you are free to experiment with more diverse flavors – including some lighter and more complex flavors that might be lost on a regular pizza. This is where a book like Pizza on the Grill comes in. It is full of ideas for topping off those great grilled pizzas, toppings that can infuse a lot of flavor into a quick-cooking pizza, and it’s a book that will keep you inspired even if you’re a seasoned pizza-griller. There are meat-topped pizzas, vegetarian pizzas, seafood pizzas and even breakfast and dessert pizzas in this book.

If you’re not a seasoned pizza griller, it is not difficult to become one. The book starts out with a comprehensive introduction that walks you through basic pizza grilling technique for both charcoal and gas grills (I use gas). There are lots of step-by-step pictures to help you out and ensure that you’re heading in the right direction. There are also lots of wonderful photos of the various pizzas in the book, photos that look good enough to eat and will definitely send you out to turn on the grill if the names of the recipes alone don’t do it.