Pizza on the Grill

 
Are you a thin or thick crust person when it comes to pizza?  Everyone in my house loves a thin crispy crust pizza, so it came as no surprise to me that pizza on the grill was BY FAR the best homemade pizza I've ever had.  Actually, it's the best pizza I've ever had, period. 

Don't let the idea of cooking pizza on the grill scare you.  I promise it is easy, and well worth the effort.  I don't have a "recipe" for this.  I'm just going to explain how to do it.  First, you either want to make your own pizza dough or you can buy it - most grocery stores sell pizza dough, and some pizza places will also sell you their dough.  Figure out what you want to have for toppings, and if there is any pre-cooking involved you want to do that before you are ready to start up the grill.  For example, my husband and son like sausage on their pizza and I like carmalized onions on mine, and both these items require cooking before going on your pizza.  Once, your toppings are all set, then you can go ahead a spread out your dough.  For us, we like to make individual pizzas, so I cut the dough up and give everyone their piece and everyone spreads it out to their desired thinness.  Since I like really thin pizza, I find it's best to spread it so thin it seems like it will break because once it hits the heat on the grill it will rise and will end up being thicker than you expected. 

Once you've spread your dough out, spray both sides with cooking spray.  Feel free to brush it will olive oil instead, but I found after doing this several times both ways, that the crust will be crispier if you just spray it with cooking spray.  Make sure your grill is nice and hot, then gently lay the pizza dough directly onto the grill.  Cook for about 5 minutes on one side, then flip it and cook the other side for about 4 minutes.  (The dough pictured here clearly has too much olive oil on it....I might have gotten a little carried away, that's why I switched to the cooking spray instead).

  
Remove the dough from the grill and add your sauce, cheese and toppings.  When your pizzas are ready, put them back on the grill for another 10-12 minutes on medium low heat.  

You want to cook it until the cheese is melted the way you like it.  Personally, I don't like burned/dark brown cheese, so once the cheese is melted and it's a nice golden brown we take it off.  Here's mine after it's cooked (yeah, my pizza is the biggest, and yes I ate every single bite of it all by myself).

Mmmmm, doesn't that look yummy???  This is one of my favorite pizzas - I mixed pesto with regular pizza sauce, and it's topped with mushrooms and carmalized onions.  Oh how I LOVE carmalized onions on pizza....my mouth is watering just looking at this picture!  Anyway, now you see how easy this is, so go try it!