Thursday, July 23, 2009

Deep dish pizza while camping

As someone who has taken the single pot method of cooking to some extremes in the past I felt that this camping trip should live up to the tradition. That said, I wanted to try something new and had the idea to try making a Chicago style deep dish pizza in my dutch oven over a camp stove. A quick Google of the idea yielded almost no guidance. So I offer my experience here for the edification of the next person to give it a try.

Dough:
I made and froze a half pound dough before I left, along with about a cup of marinara sauce. My dough is a simple 1lb flour, 1 tb salt, 1 tb brown sugar, 2 tsp yeast and 1+ cup of water. This was half that.

At the campsite I oiled my dutch oven, stretched the dough and placed it inside the oven working it up the sides. The trick I discovered here is that the dough wants to fall back into the center so you need to have all the fillings close by and ready. I placed a layer of large cheese slices in first, followed by my other fillings, then sauce and then a final layer of cheese.

I baked it on my lowest setting for about an hour. Upon removal I discovered that yes, the crust had baked but that part of the bottom was burned. All of the fillings were hot, the cheese was molten and the side crust was great.

When I attempt this again I will try to spread the heat a bit, perhaps with a heat tamer between the stove and the oven. Or, I could do it in the coals of the fire.

No comments: