One of my daughters is in town this week for a short visit. She said she's been craving my pizza ever since I first started experimenting earlier this year with my grandmother's Italian bread recipe to make pizza dough. She asked me if I'd make her pizza. Who could refuse such a request? One of my favorite ingredients on pizza is homemade, sliced Italian sausage meatballs. They are fantastic on the smoker and have so many uses for leftovers. I thought "Heck, since I'm going to have the smoker fired up, might as well try smoking a pizza!" It was going to be a first for me.
I make HUGE meatballs when I make them. Here they are going on the WSM with some apple wood for the TBS. They are best smoked on a grill topper but I was going to use both my 15" paella pans ($25 Amazon) in the pizza making process, one of which I often use for a drip pan.
I mixed up the dough, let it rise, then separated it into roughly 1 lb portions to use to make bread and pizza dough. Today's recipe gave me 5 lbs of dough. Usually I'd get 2 loaves of bread and 6 thin crust pizzas out of that amount. Today, since I was experimenting, I decided to make 3 loaves (one to send home with my daughter) and two thicker crust pizzas, one on the smoker and one in the oven on a stone.
The meatballs are finished to 165F IT at about two hours at 350-400F chamber temp, and two of the loaves baked. Time to set them aside and start working on the smoker pizza crust.
Time to get creative on making the smoker pizza crust. I put a nice layer of EVOO in one of my well seasoned paella pans, spread the pizza dough as close to the edges as I could get, covered the top with EVOO then let it rest for an hour before putting it in the smoker with a chamber temp just over 400F to bake it half way. It was in the smoker for 16 minutes, probably about 4 minutes too long but the bottom came out looking nice once I pulled it off the smoker to load it with ingredients!
All loaded with sauce, onions, garlic, pepperoni, and smoked meatball. Then on the smoker for about 20 minutes. It needed to bake just a little longer but I thought I was seeing burnt edges on the crust so I pulled it. Turned out it was fine. The bottom of the crust was crunchy and the pieces could be held by the edge of the crust and it didn't bend at all. It was DELICIOUS!!!! My daughter kept saying OMG with every bite. The WSM pizza won hands down over the pizza I did in the oven on a stone with the same ingredients. All in all a fun experiment and first time effort. Plus I found a new use for my paella pans!
I make HUGE meatballs when I make them. Here they are going on the WSM with some apple wood for the TBS. They are best smoked on a grill topper but I was going to use both my 15" paella pans ($25 Amazon) in the pizza making process, one of which I often use for a drip pan.
I mixed up the dough, let it rise, then separated it into roughly 1 lb portions to use to make bread and pizza dough. Today's recipe gave me 5 lbs of dough. Usually I'd get 2 loaves of bread and 6 thin crust pizzas out of that amount. Today, since I was experimenting, I decided to make 3 loaves (one to send home with my daughter) and two thicker crust pizzas, one on the smoker and one in the oven on a stone.
The meatballs are finished to 165F IT at about two hours at 350-400F chamber temp, and two of the loaves baked. Time to set them aside and start working on the smoker pizza crust.
Time to get creative on making the smoker pizza crust. I put a nice layer of EVOO in one of my well seasoned paella pans, spread the pizza dough as close to the edges as I could get, covered the top with EVOO then let it rest for an hour before putting it in the smoker with a chamber temp just over 400F to bake it half way. It was in the smoker for 16 minutes, probably about 4 minutes too long but the bottom came out looking nice once I pulled it off the smoker to load it with ingredients!
All loaded with sauce, onions, garlic, pepperoni, and smoked meatball. Then on the smoker for about 20 minutes. It needed to bake just a little longer but I thought I was seeing burnt edges on the crust so I pulled it. Turned out it was fine. The bottom of the crust was crunchy and the pieces could be held by the edge of the crust and it didn't bend at all. It was DELICIOUS!!!! My daughter kept saying OMG with every bite. The WSM pizza won hands down over the pizza I did in the oven on a stone with the same ingredients. All in all a fun experiment and first time effort. Plus I found a new use for my paella pans!
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