Tom's Backyard BBQ: Super Bowl Pizzas on the Big Green Egg

Pizza is one of my favorite things to cook on the Big Green Egg. Considering that it had been 5-6 months since I last cooked a pizza, I figured that Super Bowl Sunday was a perfect opportunity for this. I have pizza cooking down to a science now and will break this down into 4 steps.

Step 1: Roll out the dough. I buy publix brand store made dough in the bakery section. Clean off a large space on the counter and cover it in flour. Roll out the pizza dough until it resembles a pizza. You may need to continue adding flour to get the dough to roll out properly.

Step 2: Set up BGE for pizza cooking. My pizza cooking set up consists of an inverted placesetter (legs down rather than up), 3 green ceramic legs arranged in a triangle on top of placesetter, and a ceramic pizza stone resting on top of the ceramic legs. This set up creates indirect heat and a space between the placesetter and the pizza stone. Your pizza stone would get too hot if placed directly on top of the placesetter and would result in burnt crust. You want the pizza stone to be around the same temp as the dome temp in the egg but not as hot as the ceramic placesetter to prevent burnt crust.

Step 3: Heat the BGE up to about 500 degrees and let it ride there for 10-15 minutes. This is enough to get the pizza stone hot and ready for cooking. Drop a pinch of cornmeal evenly over the stone. Place the rolled out dough onto the stone by using a pizza peal. Flip after about 4-5 minutes and cook the other side.

What you want is a pizza crust that is relative firm on both sides but not quite cooked on the inside. This is a necessary step for properly cooked pizza on the egg in my opinion. Dough that is not precooked or crisped is too flimsy, does not support the toppings, and is almost impossible to get off the peel and onto the stone. By precooking the dough it is just stiff enough to support the toppings and slide back onto the stone. This method also allows the toppings to cook just enough while the inside of the dough finishes all at the same time. I developed this method through a lot of trial and error and haven't ruined a pizza in quite a while.

Step 4: Assemble your pizzas on the precooked dough and place them back on the stone. Cook for about 10 minutes per pizza or to your liking. I typically cook my pizzas between 500-700 degrees depending on what level of crisp I want on them. These pizzas were cooked at about 550 degrees.

Now that I have gone through my method of cooking, I will show you what we made for the big game. Below is a simple list of ingredients for each pizza.

White / Veggie Pizza: