Nothing compares to a brick oven pizza and if you own a Big Green Egg, or any other ceramic cooker, you can make delicious pizza at home.
Recently, we experimented with a few techniques to enhance our pizza preparation.
Making this particular recipe does take time, typically 4-5 hours; however, in this article, we included a couple of time saving strategies, for an easy weeknight dinner.
Making the dough for the Big Green Egg Pizza
In the past, we made our pizza dough from scratch using a recipe from the Big Green Egg forum (a website for Big Green Egg enthusiast), but today we decided to try DeLallo’s Italian Pizza Dough Kit.
Use this dough kit as a substitution for the dough ingredients from the Big Green Egg forum; 2 cups of bread flour; 2 tsp. table salt; 1 tsp garlic powder.
For this test cook, we poured one whole package of DeLallo’s Italian Pizza Dough Kit in our food processor, with the dough blade attachment. {Time saver ingredient.}
Time saver tip: To activate the yeast, heat 1 1/4 cups of water in the microwave to almost a rolling boil; then cool the water with ice cubes until it reaches exactly 117ºF (using an instant read thermometer).
To the water, add 2 teaspoons of pure cane syrup (you could use molasses). This gives the dough a little sweetness.
Stir the water until the syrup/molasses has completely dissolved. Add the package of yeast, which came with your kit, to the water. Stir until it has dissolved.
Let the water stand at room temperature for 20 minutes, so the yeast can bloom.
Slowly, but gradually add the water to your dry ingredients, in the food processor. Pulsing to keep the dough moving.
Once all the water is incorporated and a dough ball has formed, add 2 teaspoons of olive oil and 1 1/2 teaspoons each, of dried basil and dried oregano.
Time saver tip: Knead the dough, in the food processor for approximately 10 minutes.
You can knead the dough by hand for 20-30 minutes.
On a wood surface, spread a little bread flour, to keep the dough from sticking. Remove the dough from the food processor and form into a ball.
Place the ball into a bowl, lightly sprayed with cooking spray, and cover loosely with plastic wrap.
If you are making the dough from scratch, allow 3 hours for the bread to rise.
If you are using DeLallo’s Pizza Kit, the dough should take only one hour to rise. {Time saver tip}
Prep your pizza toppings
Almost anything can be used as a pizza topping. We browned some ground beef and ground pork, adding a teaspoon of dried Italian seasonings.
The leftovers, after making pizzas, will go into a spaghetti sauce.
We grated some mozzarella cheese, cheddar cheese and Monterrey jack cheese.
Time saver tip: The pre-sliced pepperoni found in the deli area of your supermarket works great on homemade pizza’s, as well as jarred pizza sauce, we prefer Rao’s pizza sauce.
Drain the fat from the meat and set aside for making each pizza.
Preparing the Big Green Egg
Make sure you have properly cleaned out your Big Green Egg.
Read how to properly maintain your Big Green Egg HERE!
Light up your vessel! You will want to reach approximately 600º for cooking.
Here is how to properly set up for Big Green Egg:
Constructing your pizza
Place dough on a wooden board that has some bread flour spread all over it.
Using a dough blade, cut your dough into two equal parts. Wrap the spare dough in plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator.
Roll out the dough you will cook first, on your wooden surface.
Shake some cornmeal or bread flour on your pizza peel.
We use a Natural Bamboo Pizza Peel 12″ x 19 1/2″
After you have rolled the dough out to the appropriate thickness you want for your pizza, place the dough on the pizza peel.
Using a dinner fork, stab the pizza dough surface, to form several holes – in 3 – 4 places.
The first layer should be sauce. For a 10″ size pizza, two tablespoons of sauce is plenty.
Avoid too much sauce, as it will make the pizza soggy.
Use the back of the spoon to spread the sauce.
Next, place your pepperoni slices around the pizza, followed by any other meat toppings.
Lastly, we add our grated cheese.
Slide the pizza onto your pizza stone and allow to cook for 8-10 minutes.
Cheese should be melted.
Crust should be brown.
Final tips for cooking pizza on the Big Green Egg
- Make sure your vessel is clean and you are using new lump/charcoal.
- Heat your vessel to 600º before cooking pizza.
- Flavor your pizza dough during the kneading process.
- Stabbing the dough with a fork prevents the dough from bubbling during the cooking process.
- Sauce should be your bottom layer of the pizza.
- Crust should be brown and cheese melted to indicate doneness.
