When life hands you lemons, you're supposed to make lemonade. I made pizza instead.
A few months ago, my pizza stone broke in two. I could still scooch the pieces together to make pizza in the oven, but it occurred to me yesterday, a day way too hot for cranking the oven to 500, that half of the split stone might fit on the backyard grill.
I'd never had much luck with grilled pizza before. The underside tended to burn before the top cooked. I'd heard of putting the pizza stone on the grill, but my stone was too big -- until it broke.
Could half a stone be better than one?
The half fit nicely on our Weber kettle grill. I made a small pizza, slid it onto the stone, put the grill lid on and kept and eye on it -- peeking through the holes in the lid. In 12 minutes, about the same time it takes to bake in the oven, it was done. The crust was nicely browned, the fresh mozzarella melted and caramelized in spots like a roasted marshmallow.
Then I proceeded to make three more small pizzas -- each of them burned on the bottom and at least slightly undercooked on top.
Clearly the stone got hotter after that first batch of pizza.
I'm done with grilled pizza for a while, perhaps forever. So's my family, who had to make do with salad and scraped-off pizza toppings. (The melted mozzarella, fresh sauce, sliced local, yellow tomatoes and backyard basil were quite good, even without crust, but still!)
But I'm still curious. If anyone out there knows how to do grilled pizza right, I'd like to hear about it.
AP photo of grilled pizzas gone right