The stars are out, the crickets are chirruping, you have set up your camping spot and now, you’re ready to eat. One of the best things about going on a camping trip is experiencing dining in the great outdoors but most of us still want a hearty and delicious meal.
When you are camping, you might want to try your hand at a campfire pizza recipe and then good news is that just because you are out in the wild, it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy your favourite pizza recipe. In fact, pizza has quickly become a camping staple for many adventurers, you just need to make sure that you have the right equipment.
In this post, we are going to be showing you one of the easiest campfire pizza recipes that is easy to make and a great food option for camping meals.
How Do You Cook Pizza On A Fire Pit?
While pizza may not be a traditional camping meal, it is certainly becoming a staple for families who might have a picky kid or who want some home comforts while they enjoy their camping trip.
Even if you decide to go for an adult meal that follows more traditional campfire recipes, with this easy to make campfire pizza, you won’t need to put yourself out.
What Do I Need To Make Campfire Pizza?
The great thing about campfire pizza is that you don’t need a whole host of pizza ingredients and you are free to make the recipe as simple or indeed as complex as you would like.
Cast iron skillets or a cast iron pan are a great cookware option for camping recipes like the campfire pizza but if you don’t have one, you can use just as about pan you have to hand. Many people will use their Dutch oven which is typically also made from cast iron. That’s the beauty of being out in the wild, you make do with what you’ve got.
In a nutshell, you will need pizza tomato sauce, your favourite pizza topping such as cheese, red onion, ham; whatever you like and of course, pizza dough. This is often the most difficult thing to make on a camping trip but the good news is that you can make the dough from scratch at home and keep it chilled for up to three days.
That being said, if you want to , you can take your ingredients on the road and make your dough around the campfire. However, when doing this, we should point out that the prep time for pizza dough will include, mixing the flour, olive oil, water, yeast, salt and sugar before kneading the dough and then allowing it to rise for at least an hour. So, if you are going to make the dough when you go camping, be sure to give yourself plenty of prep time. Check out our quick pizza recipe:
2 cups flourRapid rise yeast (1 packet)2 tsp salt1 cup warm waterOliveoil (5 tablespoons)Your favorite toppings
Start by mixing the dry recipe ingredients in a bowl with a fork until they are blended. Next, add in the wet ingredients, retaining 3 tablespoons of the oil for later on (this will be used to coat your pan so that the pizza dough doesn’t stick while cooking . Mix thoroughly with your fork.
Knead your pizza dough well; this is one of the most important parts of the recipe. In a home kitchen, we would suggest kneading for a total time of 20 minutes but around teh campfire you could reduce this to 5 minutes if you are very pushed for time.
Now allow the dough to rise. Again, at home the total time for proofing would be 90 minutes at room temperature, but for campfire pizza, you could cut this to half an hour.
Cooking Pizza On A Campfire
One of the great things about being at home is that you can make your pizza dough, load on the pizza sauce and toppings and pop it in the pizza oven for a total time of around 2 minutes or around 20 minutes total time for pizza made in a kitchen oven.
However, when you go camping, you don’t have your oven so you need to alter the way you cook these camping recipes. For us, that’s all part of the excitement.
There have been many people who have experimented with cooking pizza on a grill but in order to do this over your campfire, you would need to have a proper grate which isn’t always possible. So, this is why we suggest using a cast iron pan. Using a cast iron skillet or cast iron pan allows you to cook in various ways which is ideal for when you want to make pizza in nature.
To begin with you will need to shape the dough in your cast iron skillet. You may have kneaded the dough on a cutting board but it is easier to shape it in the pan. Start by pushing it out to form the crust and forming the entire shape of the pizza around the pan.
Now you are ready to start cooking. How you do this will depend on the type of heat you are using. A lot of people will make campfire pizza on a traditional campfire, however, some people like to use a propane stove. Either way is fine but if you are opting for the propane stove, you will need to keep moving the cast iron pan around so that the heat cooks the pizza dough evenly.
For a fire, you won’t need to worry about this as the fire will typically envelop the pan and distribute heat evenly. You should also keep in mind that cast iron will hold heat for a long time even after you remove from the fire. For this reason, we would always urge you to be careful when handling the campfire pizza cooking equipment.
The dough will cook from the bottom and as such, you want to make sure that you remove from the fire once the base is cooked underneath. It doesn’t matter if the top part of the dough is not yet cooked as you will be giving it some more cooking time on the fire once the toppings have been added. If you leave it any longer at this point, there is a chance that the recipe will burn and you will have to start from scratch.
Once it is off the fire, you can flip the pizza base over and add your pizza sauce and your favorite toppings; meats, veggie toppings; anything you like. Most people will use tomato sauce but you can make pizzas with BBQ sauce or any other flavour.
Now you can return the food to the fire but this time, make sure that you cover the pizza with either a cast iron lid or some aluminum foil. This will keep the heat inside and allow the cheese to melt. Once the cheese has melted, you can remove the foil. This will prevent the pizzas form becoming too moist and ultimately soggy.
The cook time, 15 minutes, is usually enough to have another pizza base prepped and ready to go since you will need to cook each of your pizzas separately.
Once it is ready, transfer the campfire pizza to a cutting board and cut it into pieces.
Can You Use A Pizza Stone On A Campfire?
If you love to cook pizzas then you will know that a pizza stone is a great way to make pizza that is evenly cooked and delicious. Not only this but the residual heat of the stone could reduce the total time you need to cook. For example, in a pizza oven, pizza only requires around 2 minutes cook time.
You can use a pizza stone to make pizza on a campfire. Just keep in mind that this will be another piece of equipment that you need to take camping. These items can be quite heavy and may weigh you down if you are hiking from campsite to campsite. However, on the plus side, they do offer the best way to create an authentic and well-cooked pizza.
To use your pizza stone for campfire pizza, you will replace the cast iron pan that we discussed earlier on and use the stone instead. You will need a grate or rack to place this on. With this in mind, let’s take a look at how you can make campfire pizza recipes using a pizza stone.
Begin by placing the pizza stone onto the grate, above the fire. You will need to give the pizza stone time to heat up so while this is happening, you can get to work on other aspects of your campfire pizza.Take your pizza dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it out into your desired shape and thickness (it may shrink in size a little when you stop shaping it) (it may shrink in size a little when you stop shaping it). You can do this following the same process we discussed when you make pizza directly in the pan.Now, place the dough onto the stone and leave it to cook for around ten minutes. This, of course, may vary so you should keep an eye on the food during the cooking process and remove it sooner if you need to.When you’re ready, take the pizza off the fire and begin spreading on your pizza sauce and toppings. Just like before, spread the food onto the cooked side of the base.Now return it to the fire and give the food another ten minutes, covered in foil. As we mentioned earlier, once the cheese melts, fell free to remove the foil for the rest of the cooking time to allow any excess moisture to be released.When you remove the campfire pizza, you can now leave it to cool for a few minutes before cutting it into pieces and enjoying it around your campfire.
Can You Cook Frozen Pizza On A Campfire?
There are some of us that do not want to make recipes from scratch and so taking a frozen pizza on your camping adventure is a great alternative. But one of the main problems with this compared to a ‘homemade’ recipe is that if you try to cook your pizza over the campfire, the base will burn before the toppings have cooked through.
But this is a problem that can be solved by cutting the frozen pizza into smaller pieces and placing it inside a pie iron. You can then hold this over the fire until the pizza is cooked. You are not running the risk of your food burning and it almost always turns out great.
While you can get pie irons made from other metals, we would always suggest using one that is made from cast iron. Not only do they retain the heat and offer a more even cooking result but they often make the food taste a lot nicer, regardless of what you are cooking.
Conclusion
Camping is one of life’s little pleasures; getting out into the open, enjoying the fresh air and taking the time to prepare a meal to enjoy with the family. But pizza isn’t typically something you would see on the menu. Until recently, when more and more people are taking their homemade recipes and bringing them out into the wild. This tells us that it is perfectly viable to make pizza on a campfire.
This is most easily done using a cast iron pan or skillet and cooking the dough from the bottom up before turning it over, popping on your toppings and continuing to grill until the cheese melts and you have a delicious camping pizza fit for even the most demanding adventurers. What’s even better is that if you don’t have your own fresh recipe, you can just as easily heat up a frozen pizza while you are camping.
So, light that campfire and enjoy a pizza style menu on your next camping trip.