Birds and a homemade pizza party. Even though it is relatively simple, there are a lot of people who have never made a pizza from scratch and everyone has fun. Homemade pizzas are great for movie night because you can provide a customized meal for everyone and since they don’t require utensils, they are easy to eat out of your lap while watching a movie.
For years we have been doing pizza night at least once a week, but only since we moved to Hawaii have we started cooking for ourselves. One of our first nights here, surrounded by moving boxes, I picked up a pizza and wings from a local pizza joint…$40 later I decided I would not be doing that anymore. I was able to convince the wife to give me the okay to buy a [easyazon_link identifier=”B00CELFJ4A” locale=”US” nw=”y” nf=”y” tag=”blackstoneoven-20″]Blackstone Pizza Oven[/easyazon_link], it has been a great addition to our family. Read my in depth review of the Blackstone here, suffice it to say it has a legion of fans and my family is among them.
Since the [easyazon_link identifier=”B00CELFJ4A” locale=”US” nw=”y” nf=”y” tag=”blackstoneoven-20″]Blackstone[/easyazon_link] can cook a pizza in 3-4 minutes it is perfect for doing pizza parties.
Pizza Dough Ready to be rolled out.
Dough: My favorite recipe is the basic recipe from [easyazon_link identifier=”0312649940″
locale=”US” nw=”y” nf=”y” tag=”blackstoneoven-20″]Artisan Pizza and Flatbreads in 5 minutes a day[/easyazon_link]. This is an amazing resource for anyone who wants to make pizzas at home. If you are at all interested in baking high quality breads at home, you need to add [easyazon_link identifier=”0312362919″ locale=”US” tag=”blackstoneoven-20″]Artisan Breads[/easyazon_link] by the same authors.
7.5 Cups of unbleached all purpose flower
1 Tbs Salt
1 Tbs Bakers Yeast
1/3 Cup Olive Oil
3 1/6 Cups of room temperature water
Mix, cover and let sit for 2 hours. This dough doesn’t have to be kneaded.
Pizza dough, Pizza Crust, Blackstone Pizza Oven, Pizza Oven, Home Pizza Oven
Make sure you keep the dough well-floured as you roll it out.
TIP: Roll the dough out on parchment paper, then cut the edge off the paper around the dough. The parchment paper makes the pizzas easier to launch into the oven and doesn’t result in the excess smoking that cornmeal causes.
Sauce: In a pinch we will use a pre-made sauce, but I prefer to make my own no cook sauce. I like to use whole canned tomatoes, a little tomato paste, a little bit of fresh garlic, a little sugar, a dash of oregano, salt and pepper, and occasionally I will add red pepper flakes. I don’t use a hard fast recipe, and as long as I don’t go nuts with any of the ingredients the results are always superior to pre-made sauce. The great thing about the no cook sauces is that you can make them just minutes before guests arrive, but they are better when they get a chance to sit overnight.
Toppings: For kids, this is the best part of pizza parties, everyone gets to build their pizza like they
This is how I set up our assembly table, the lazy Susan worked great for maximizing space.
want. We will always like to provide some toppings like cheese, but I like to invite guests to bring toppings as well. This is a good way to get exposure to some new ingredients as well if you find yourself buying the same things again and again. We put all the toppings on a lazy Susan, which saved space and ensured little people could reach all the toppings that they wanted.
TIP: You will probably find that some guests have not made a pizza before, newbies have a tendency to put too many toppings on, this makes it more difficult to get the pizza to cook all the way through. For the uninitiated, you might want to provide a little bit of coaching to save yourself some hassle at the oven.
For this event I par baked the crusts, this means I rolled them out ahead of time and cooked them
A simple cheese pizza in the Blackstone Oven.
for a few minutes. I did this to reduce the time to prep each pizza and to make sure they could hold up under the sauce a little better. I also got weird requests from the kids, no sauce or no cheese, doing these kinds of pizzas with uncooked dough would have been a disaster. These crusts also freeze okay, so you can pop them out on a work night to quick turn some pies. I will definitely do this again if we host another party. It allowed me to get about 10 pizzas through the oven in less than an hour.
Pizza parties are a fun event for everyone and make clean up a snap, the Blackstone Oven makes it even easier, but you could do it on the grill too if you needed to. If you have already fallen in love with the idea, hopefully the above tips will make things a little easier for you. If you have a secret you have learned and would like to share, please add it in the comments section.
[easyazon_infoblock align=”none” identifier=”B00CELFJ4A” locale=”US” tag=”blackstoneoven-20″]
[easyazon_infoblock align=”none” identifier=”0312649940″ locale=”US” tag=”blackstoneoven-20″]
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