Foodie Friday: Grilled Pizza

Although grilling season is a distant memory here, I came across these pictures today and decided that I should share our pizza grilling techniques with you before I loose the pictures. Mr. Cherry and I have worked hard on perfecting on pizza grilling for several years now. Each season we seem to get better and better. When we first started, we usually ended up burning the bottom of the crust before the rest of the pizza was completely cooked. Then one day I read somewhere that you could use a terra cotta saucer from the garden department as a stoneware pizza dish. We now only use our saucer for grilling our pizza.

Here's the play-by-play of pizza making at Bowl of Cherrys:
1. While Mr. Cherry starts the grill, I get the dough rocking and rolling. (Of course I use my basic dough recipe for this.)
2. Once the charcoal is ready, the saucer is put on the grill to preheat. (Spread the coals more to the outside in a ring shape.)
**You will want to season your saucer with shortening or olive oil the first few uses and every once in a while after that.**
3. We roll out the crust and place it on an inverted pizza pan generously covered in corn meal. (This is the key to keeping the crust from sticking.)
4. The rest of the pizza is assembled on top of the crust. (The pictures show a bbq chicken pizza. I will share that recipe later.)
5. Once the saucer has been preheated, it is time to transfer the pizza to the saucer on the grill. This is a bit tricky. We usually use a combination of sliding, spatulas, and luck. Before putting the pizza on the saucer, you will want to add plenty of cornmeal to the saucer.
6. We don't have a firm cooking time for the pizza. It is kind of a wait, see, and smell technique. You have to wait to be sure that the pizza is cooked all of the way through. You want to smell a bready smell which indicates that the crust is done. And you will want to see that the toppings are all cooked and the cheese is melted.
7. We usually transfer the pizza bake to a pan from the saucer before bringing it in.

 MMM, makes me long for spring!

8. We have yet to have success with grilling back to back pizzas. Usually the second pizza just doesn't turn out quite right because the heat is off from the first.