Man, getting back into the groove today is not easy, is it! With 4th of July landing on a Tuesday, we took off almost five full days which is unheard of around these parts. It was a great long weekend full of beach trips and pool parties, but one of the highlights was our night of grilling pizza with some friends. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that we didn’t take a lot of pictures, but we ended up making four pizzas total for our first go-round: A margarita (pictured), a sausage and onion (my favorite), a pepperoni, and a white pie.

As we progressed through the night, the pizzas got better and better. We definitely learned a few things along the way, so I thought I’d share those with you today!

A few tips

• We used a pizza stone which made everything a whole lot easier. You can find them at Bed Bath and Beyond or even on Amazon for about $20. We plan to use ours a lot over the next few years, so it was worth buying it for sure.
• I also recommend making a test pie before you have people over. Our first one was a complete failure, but then we got the hang of it. The directions below sound easy, but it’s harder than it looks!
• Make a party out of it. These pizzas will be a huge hit so show off with friends and family! We served ours with rosé (and Sicilian limonata for the two pregos) and a big salad for a festive summer evening. It felt more elevated than a regular BBQ but was just as easy. Anel was cooking pizzas as we ate them fresh off the grill, for a more relaxed feel and so we could eat them while they were still hot.

What you need

A grill… obviously. Ours is gas but I think charcoal would work just as well.
A pizza stone
A brush for olive oil
Metal tongs
Metal spatula
A surface or small table for toppings

Ingredients

Pizza dough (We got ours from our favorite local pizzeria. You can make it from scratch, but this was a way easier option!)
Marinara sauce (I use Rao’s)
Fresh mozzarella
Shaved mozzarella
Olive oil
Salt and red pepper flakes
Sliced garlic
Fresh basil
Toppings of your choice!

Directions

1. Prep your toppings inside before you even get to the grill. This is what took us the longest amount of time in the entire process. We sliced the cheese, opened the tomato sauce, chopped herbs, cooked onions and sausage, and plated everything on one tray for easy access later (you’ll see why soon)
2. Heat the grill and pizza stone to as high of a heat as you possibly can. We got it up to 550, but 600 is apparently ideal based on what we read. If you’re not using a stone, just heat the grill itself.
3. Roll the dough into a small circle or kind-of circle… It’s hard to get it perfect, but I like it better that way! We wanted crispy thin-crust pizza, so we rolled it as thin as possible using a rolling pin. We rolled the dough on a wooden pizza paddle so that we could easily transfer it to the pizza stone later but that’s not 100% necessary.
4. Brush the dough with olive oil and lay it down on the pizza stone. Not too much! Just enough to coat it.
5. Grill the dough for 1-2 minutes. Open the grill and flip it so that the olive oil side is facing down.
6. Add your toppings You have to be quick here, which is why you want all of your toppings readily available near the grill. Spread a layer of tomato sauce on the dough, followed by cheese and then toppings. We like to add a drizzle of olive oil and red pepper flakes too. For the margarita we used fresh sliced mozzarella, but for the rest we used the shaved which makes it more melty cheesy pizza-like… you know what I mean!
7. Grill the pizza for 3 to 5 minutes. When it’s done, the edges should be crispy but not burned and cheese should be all melty.
8. Cool the pizza by removing it from the grill and letting it cool for at least 3 minutes before cutting in. It will be tempting, but the wait is worth it!
9. Enjoy! With a glass of rosé if possible.

We plan to do this as many times as possible this summer because it was insanely good! I’m going to play around with cauliflower crust too and will report back to let you know how that goes. In the meantime, let me know your favorite topping combos so I can experiment!