Wood Fired Pizza

Jun 16, 2018 | At Home, Entertaining, Featured | 0 comments

An outdoor wood fired pizza oven is great for entertaining

We wanted to enjoy wood fired pizza at home so we built a pizza oven years ago, and it has become a centerpiece for back yard entertaining ever since. I was able to built the basic oven back in 2012, but because I’m not much of a mason I did not complete it until a couple of years ago. However we’ve been using the oven for entertaining despite it’s crude appearance.

Setting up the party was easy

For this party we invited friends Randy and Sandy over on a rainy day. It was cold but we had a fire burning while we were baking pizzas. The umbrella and gazebo did a great job keeping us dry. A couple of blankets were available for anyone that was cold.

Our plan when hosting an event like this is to let each guest unleash their creative juices to build a personal pizza to their liking. We can all share our creations so everyone can enjoy the pizza.

We created several kinds of baked goods

I was focused on making a cheeseburger pizza. Starting with a base sauce of mustard and ketchup, the crust was layered with ground tri-tip and cheddar cheese. I like to use homemade pickled jalapenos as a topper for that little bit of extra zest. We also experimented with making calzones using the same cheeseburger ingredients and they turned out surprisingly tasty. We like to use the crust as a palette onto which we paint our favorite ingredients.

At the end of the day we loaded a tray of halved Roma tomatoes topped with Italian seasoning into the slowly cooling oven. We left them in the oven overnight and in the morning we were rewarded with a tray of sweet and savory tomato halves with a chewy texture. They are perfect as an ingredient for other dishes.