Pizza-Camping-Night In Lanzarote - How To Make Campfire Pizza
Since one week we are back on Gran Canaria from our road trip in the European mainland. It was a wonderful time, where we drove with “Lenny The Overlander” from southern Spain to Germany and the way back. It took us almost 2 months and 8000 km for that road trip. Actually we needed this trip to get back on track after a lot of work and tragic events. We had such a nice time that we could disconnect and finally got over some issues. Of course, we have captured many beautiful pictures to remember those moments and I can show you some of them in one of my next posts for sure.
But now I would like to share with you one of our nice evenings we had last year on Lanzarote.
Besides we had every single day a sunset like this, we also had a PIZZA-CAMPING-NIGHT…!!!!
Which was definitely more than perfect to end this wonderful day!
Normally I have used to think pizza is completely incompatible with camping. You had to make the dough, you needed to have an oven, it just didn’t seem like it was going to work.
But my love for self-made pizza runs deep, so I tried to make a camping-friendly pizza that would allow us to achieve the dream of enjoying a pizza-camping-night with cold beer and a campfire at our campsite with my love ones.
However, it also came with some challenges. Not only I was trying to make a pizza from the scratch on a campsite and without an oven, but the process also had to be simple enough that it is manageable, because nothing is worse than overly complicated cooking while camping. It has to be simple, easy and delicious.
Believe me, this was not the best Pizza-Camping-Night but anyway it was worth it. Because in the end we could enjoy a really deliciouses pizza with cold beer at the campfire.
This was followed by a few more Pizza-Camping-Night’s where I try to improved some little things here and there each time, just to make it as easy as possible. But in the end I realized that even the pizza baking and preparation itself can be enjoyable. It does not always mean only that the eating brings joy, but it should also make fun during cooking. Then there is no stress at all.
Ok, so let’s start with the pizza dough.
THE PIZZA DOUGH
My first trouble was the dough. Because usually when a recipe calls for yeast, I only dared to approach at home. Yeast dough is always a little tricky for me due to the leaving and rising.
But I had decided to prepare us an authentic pizza and to our surprise it came out much better than I would have thought. All I have to prepare in the early afternoon was to combine flour, water, salt and a packet of quick yeast in a pot. Knead it around a couple of times and then let it sit for a few hours to rise until dinner.
For the recipe of the pizza dough, I always use the "OONI" App, which gives me the exact quantities for each ingredient for a certain number of pizzas. For 4 pizza balls I used according to the OONI App 613g Flour, 368g Water, 18g Salt and 1,4g Dry Yeast.
THE PIZZA SAUCE
While Dani fired up our grill, I prepared a classic pizza tomato sauce. For the sauce is my slogan always “simplicity at its finest”. So super easy and and no nonsense. The ideal pizza sauce is made with juicy and sweet tomatoes with a hit of garlic and salt. Choosing a can of good quality tomatoes will make the difference to the flavor. So I used a 400 g canned blended plum tomatoes, a splash of olive oil, 1 finely choped garlic clove, 1 tsp salt and freshly grounded black pepper. Combined everything in a bowl.
THE TOPPINGS
I wanted to make a classic Margherita because it’s a simple yet delicious recipe and a perfect starting point. So after the tomato sauce I have chunked 2 Mozzarella balls into small pieces, grated fresh parmesan, chopped fresh basil leaves and cut another couple of cherry tomatoes in half.
How to bake a pizza without oven while camping?
Now I used a small amount of the rest of the flour to dust the surface of our camping table to place the 4 pizza dough balls. I started to stretch out one of the pizza dough balls and press the dough outwards to form the crust.
Once I have formed the dough and Dani has made our FENNEK-Grill a proper fire under the rear of the 2-divided grill surface, which offers a grill grate and a fire plate, I lay the shaped dough out on the fire plate to toast up the bottom of the dough. Once the bottom has turned golden brown I flipped the dough, so the toasted side is facing up, removed the entire grill surface from the heat and started to top the golden brown side of the dough with the pizza sauce, mozzarella, fresh basil leaves and some grated parmesan. The reason I suggest taking it off the heat is that things start moving very quickly at this point and if you’re not careful you can end up burningt too much the dough. Removing the fire plate from the heat give us more time to get our toppings done.
Once the toppings are set, I returned the grill surface with the pizza on it to the heat and I covered the pizza with a cast iron lid, which I could use from my new dutch oven, but you can also use aluminum foil. By covering the dough, the heat is trapped and allow the cheese to melt. As the toppings have a lot of moisture I have removed the lid as soon as the cheese is melted, so the steam can escape and we had a crispy and not soggy pizza.
When the bottom is also toasted I removed the pizza from the heat to a wooden plate. At this point we decide to eat the first pizza right away and not to wait. When the first craving was satisfied it came to repeat, repeat, and repeat…
The pizzas we couldn't finish, we saved for the next day as a cold snack.
You see, you don’t need a portable pizza oven to make a great pizza while camping. All you need is a fireplace and a good cast iron skillet. Just try it…!!!
You'll probably need a few tries to master it, but anyway it's fun. So when is your Pizza-Camping-Night???
Let me know,
Love,
Katy
Pics by Daniell Bohnhof
Text by me Look2 Ocean