Grilled Pizza - Our favorite pizza sauce recipe

We like to make homemade pizza in our house and it was on our menu for last week, so we had all the toppings ready to go. I had ingredients for the sauce and the crust too. Unfortunately, I forgot to pick up some fresh mozzarella cheese at the store. Well, really I forgot to check to our freezer in the garage to make sure we still had some from our last trip to Sam's Club. I was certain that we did, and then I was wrong. So pizza got pushed up to this week and I got some fresh mozzarella at Aldi since it wasn't time for our monthly Sam's run yet.

Again, it was very hot this past weekend, so on Monday when we decided to make our homemade pizza Hubby and I decided we would grill the pizza instead of bake it in the oven. This means we use a slightly different crust recipe. We like Bobby Flay's grilled flatbread recipe to make a great grilled pizza crust, you can find the recipe here. It takes a little bit of time to let the dough rise, but it is mostly inactive time, so you can get something else done, or the toppings can be prepped.

This recipe for flatbread suggests making 1 giant flatbread or 4 smaller flatbreads. We have found that even the small flatbreads are giant. In our experience, we have separated the dough into 10-12 smaller pieces. That way we can make several smaller pizzas with the toppings that each individual wants. On this evening we made a Margherita pizza, supreme pizza, and a copy cat pizza recipe from a local restaurant we enjoy, Eatery A. Their pizza we copied is called Pizza #15 on their menu with spinach, goat cheese, honey, and red onion. I will post separately about how we copied this pizza.

Hubby ate a piece of this one before I could take a picture. It was REALLY GOOD!

So when the crust is ready done rising we separate it into our smaller amounts, and then roll out each of those pieces of dough separately. I put flour on the counter and roll it out with a rolling pin as thinly as I possibly can. Then I pick up the dough and put it on a floured cookie sheet with no edges that has been floured. This way the pizza can be easily slid off the sheet and onto the grill. It's a good thing we have four large cookie sheets too because then several pizzas can be prepped and ready to be grilled. Once the dough for the crust is on the sheet and then I put all the toppings onto the crust.

Here is where we start tag teaming dinner because now Hubby takes on the prepped pizzas and brings them out to the grill. He slides them off the cookie sheet right onto the grill grate. It only takes a couple of minutes to grill the pizza, so he has to watch it closely. When the dough starts to get a little bit brown on the bottom and the cheese melts then the pizza is ready. Hubby then slides it right back onto the cookie sheet because it doesn't have a lip and it's so easy to get it on and off the grill.

When we served these at home Hubby and I loved the goat cheese pizza.

Big Man told us we should always make pizza this way, every single time!

Bear said the toppings were great but he never wanted the crust like this again.

Mr. T didn't give much feedback, but he ate more pizza than Mom.

All the boys ate more pizza this night than I think I have ever seen them eat. This crust recipe makes more than our regular crust recipe and we had two small pieces leftover, just two, I was shocked how much food they put away that night. Especially Bear who commented more than once about not enjoying the crust, but he very willingly kept eating it.

Cooking our pizza this way gets us a more crisp crust than any other way of cooking it. We also sometimes grill a couple pieces just as bread without any toppings to use and make sandwiches later. It is wonderful this way too!


So this pizza sauce I have been making for years. It was based off of a recipe I got from a Cooking Light magazine about ten years ago, but it's so easy and tastes great.

Pizza Sauce


1 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
3-ounces tomato paste
1 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp fennal seeds, crushed
pinch of red pepper flakes
2 8-ounce cans tomato sauce

In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil over medium-low heat and cook garlic cloves while stirring for about 1 minute. Then add the tomato paste and stir for another minute. Add the other spices for about 30 seconds. Pour in both cans of tomato sauce, stir all ingredients together, and let it simmer for 5-10 minutes. Either use the sauce right away, or you can cool it and freeze it until a later date.