If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, you know that I love to make pizza at home. Beginning with my favorite sourdough crust, I mix and match ingredients to discover new favorites and I’ve also had a lot of fun transforming other classic dishes into pizza, as I did with jambalaya, queso fundido, spanakopita, ratatouille, shrimp scampi and even Thanksgiving (you can check them all out on my Pizza Party page). My husband, Les, and I truly love a good pizza, and it’s in pretty hot rotation at our house, even in the summer months. 

There’s only one problem now. This god-awful heat!

Most of my pizzas (excluding the deep dish versions) are baked on what I lovingly refer to as our “screaming hot pizza steel,” which is preheated at 550° F for one hour. This summer, with outdoor temperatures holding steady in the 90s, we had a choice to make, lest we face similar temps inside. And the solution turned out to be simple— pizza on the grill!

Two summers ago, Les and I invested in a Napoleon four-burner gas grill. Part of the reason we chose this grill (besides the fact it was made in Canada, not China) is that the model can support some amazing accessories, including a rotisserie basket and a charcoal smoker insert (both of which we bought but have yet to use). What it didn’t have was a great solution for pizza.

We considered getting an outdoor pizza oven— they’re all the rage now, after all— but having one would require having a place to set it and store it, and then there’s all the accessories for it. And have you seen the price tags? Having just dropped a hefty chunk of change on our fancy grill, we couldn’t justify spending another grand on a device that would only be used for pizza.

Fortunately, we are not easily deterred, and some quick research led us to a pizza stone made by Weber that is suitable for really high temperatures. The stone is coated with a glaze that gives it an easy-release finish, and although the Weber site says you must use it with their special frame kit on select Weber grills, I’m here to report that it also works great on our Napoleon— we just set it right on top of the grates, and crank up the heat!

The first couple of pizzas we tried on the grill last summer turned out good, with melty toppings and crispy crust. But we missed the usual top-of-pie blistering that we love from our oven-baked pies, so this year, we’ve figured out a compromise. After our pizza bakes for roughly six minutes on the grill, it hits a perforated pizza pan for a spin under the oven broiler for exactly one minute. Yes, the broiler gets hot, but only very briefly compared to multiple hours at 550° F. It’s a solution that ticks all the boxes for these two pizza snobs!

Hungry for something different?

My pizza dough recipe makes enough for two pies, so I have plenty of opportunity for experimenting. I usually do something classic for one pizza, and the other becomes a blank canvas for new ideas. I’ve been tuned into Les’s suggestions quite a bit lately, and he asked last week whether we’ve ever done a pizza with bacon as a topping. I had to search my own blog to discover that, yes, I did put bacon on the jalapeño popper pizza, the Kentucky hot brown pizza and the oysters Rockefeller pizza (they are also on the Pizza Party page). 

But Les wanted something a little different, using bacon as a salty accent, plus fresh spinach (his favorite), red onions and some gruyere cheese he thought he’d spotted in the fridge. I contributed a topping of my own, ricotta, and this new pizza was born. 

I cut up the bacon into pieces and cooked it until most of the fat was rendered and it was just shy of crispy, knowing that it would cook further in the heat of the grill. The cheese we thought was gruyere turned out to be white cheddar with “gruyere notes” (whatever that means), and we mixed it about 50-50 with freshly shredded hard mozzarella to be sure there was a good melt. This pizza would not have sauce, so it needed something else with a bit of moisture. Ricotta to the rescue, though next time I would spike it with some garlic to punch up the flavor a bit.

Our six minutes on the grill stone, plus one minute under the broiler method is a winner. This is very good news for us pizza lovers, especially with an entire hot summer ahead of us. The moral of this story? Where there’s a grill, there’s a way! 😉

Bacon & Spinach Pizza— on the grill!

• Servings: One 14-inch pizza
• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 6 minutes
• Difficulty: Average
• Print

This is a fun and different flavor combination for pizza, whether you bake it in the oven or (as we did with this one) on the grill!

Ingredients

• Pizza dough ball, roughly 11 ounces
• 1/3 cup freshly grated hard mozzarella
• 1/3 cup white cheddar (or gruyere blend)
• 3 thin slices red onion, separated
• 4 slices uncured smoked bacon, cut up and cooked until shy of crispy
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme leaves
• 1/4 cup whole milk ricotta (seasoned with some garlic powder, if you like)
• Medium handful fresh baby spinach leaves, torn into smaller pieces
• 2 Tbsp. grated Parm-Romano blend cheese
• Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Baking notes: If you are baking indoors, preheat a pizza steel at 550° F for one hour; for the grill method, heat to high temperature with a stone or steel pan, following manufacturer’s instructions.

Directions

1. Shape pizza dough into 14-inch round; transfer to a flour- and cornmeal-rubbed pizza peel. Drizzle a bit of olive oil over the dough and season it with salt and pepper.
2. Scatter both mozzarella and white cheddar/gruyere all over pizza dough, then arrange onion slices, par cooked bacon and thyme leaves over the cheese.
3. Carefully spoon small dollops of ricotta on the pizza, keeping a bit of distance between.
4. Scatter spinach leaves all over, then sprinkle with Parm-Romano blend cheese and give it one last drizzle of olive oil.
5. Slide pizza onto preheated stone or steel; bake about six minutes. If grilling, transfer finished pizza to a perforated pan and slide it under a hot broiler for one minute to achieve a blistered, oven-like finish.