homemadepizzaonthestove
For many people, especially those of us without the luxury of air conditioning (yes, I’m complaining again), summer means avoiding the oven. The last thing I need on a 95 degree day is to add more heat. I do not do well in heat. I’m one of those people that breaks out the old shorts, stained tank top and puts my mess of hair in a sweaty bun. It’s amazing my husband still finds me attractive. Although I throw every care about how I look out the window due to how much effort it takes to just “be” when it’s hot, I refuse to give up homemade pizza.
My idea for stovetop pizza came from a little problem we ran into last week on our Sedona trip. We made a run to the grocery store to pick up some food to eat in the hotel room. We had a kitchenette so we knew we could make a couple of meals there. We picked up a frozen pizza and didn’t realize until the next day that while we had stove burners, we didn’t have an oven. Returning a pizza is weird and we didn’t want it to go to waste so I immediately visited my friend google to see if we could cook it in a pan. It turns out cooking pizza in a pan creates a yummy crispy crust and you don’t even have to wait for the oven to heat up.
My immediate thought after our little frozen pizza dilemma was “Can I replicate this at home with homemade pizza?” I’m here to tell you “Yes!”
IMG_8303 
IMG_8304 
IMG_8309 
IMG_8310 
IMG_8311 
IMG_8314 
IMG_8318
Now this is less a recipe and more a “how to do this with a recipe you already like”, but I’ll share a few tips. By the way, my pizza looks insanely lopsided because I forgot my dough recipe is for a much bigger pizza than I could fit in my cast iron pan with a lid from a random pot. Just had to point that out. I actually kind of prefer imperfect pizzas, so there.
1. Get your dough ready. I always start with Shutterbean’s No Knead Pizza Dough. You have to let it sit for 2 hrs and then again for 30 min, but you don’t have to knead it. It’s hot. I don’t need to knead dough when it’s 90 degrees in my house. I don’t need to ever knead dough if I don’t want to. And I usually don’t.
2. Roll your dough out to the proper size. I don’t actually roll, I just kind of mush against my hand and stretch all lazy like. I made mine too big and already had it in the pan, but couldn’t fit the lid over it so I just ripped some off. Keep size in mind when you’re rolling it out.
3. Heat your pan. I had mine on medium/low and it gave me a nice crispy crust.
4. Place your dough in the pan and let it cook for about 1-2 minutes. Flip it over.
5. Add your pizza sauce and toppings. For sauce I’ll either puree some tomatoes with some herbs or use spaghetti sauce. This time I combined them and used both because I’m a rebel like that. For toppings I just really like chunky sauce with spinach and mozarella. Boring, but yummy.
6. Put your lid over the pizza and let it cook for about 10-12 minutes. How long it takes will vary on the thickness of your dough, your pizza, what you have the stove on. It might take a few times to perfect, but as long as you keep an eye on it you’ll be good. Trust me, it doesn’t take much for me to burn things and I did fine winging it.
Now slice it up and try not to eat the whole thing. Last night I made the one pictured plus a smaller one and we may have eaten them both. Now I can bring pizza back into rotation in warm weather instead of avoiding it because I don’t want to turn the stove on. Enjoy!
Leave a Reply