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Campfire Pizza: Camping for Foodies

  • Kendra Clapp Olguín
Campfire Pizza: Camping for Foodies

We can all agree that pizza is the best, right? Then combining it with another good thing makes everything better, obviously. Camping + pizza= campfire pizza! Wanting to test the newest addition to our camping set up, Snow Peak’s field oven, a group of friends and I decided to take on making campfire pizzas. As anyone who has made pizza from scratch can attest, this is no easy feat, and the difficulty intensifies with the campfire element. Yet, armed with a few shortcuts and a team of people, we took on the challenge! Here is what we did and what we’d do differently next time.

Someone pulls out a cooked pizza from Snow Peal's field oven and tabiki grill while making campfire pizzas.

Equipment

Snow Peak Field Oven*
Snow Peak Takibi Fire & Grill*
Pizza stone or cast-iron skillet
Firewood & kindling
Matches or lighter
Heat-resistant gloves
Wooden or metal spatula
Pizza peel
Knife
Cutting board
Spoon
Kitchen towel or rag

* You don’t need the field oven and Takibi set to make campfire pizza. Yet, you do have to figure out a way for the pizza to cook in an oven-like setting- aka mostly covered. Fresh Off the Grid created a thorough guide that walks campers through the steps of baking a pizza in a cast iron on campfire grates. There are other products and covers in the market. Seeing as we already had the Takibi fire and grill, we thought we’d try it out.

A person sets the top on a Snow Peak Takibi Grill and field oven to make pizza while camping.
A person pulls a cooked pizza from the Snow Peak Field Oven and Takibi fire and grill while making campfire pizzas at the campsite.

Ingredients

Basic Toppings:

Pizza dough
Pizza sauce
Cornmeal
Flour
Fresh mozzarella cheese

A person applies flour onto a ball of fresh pizza dough while making campfire pizzas.
Someone swirls tomato sauce on top of the pizza dough while making campfire pizzas.

Vegetable Toppings:

Fresh tomatoes
Spinach
Olives
Sauteed mushrooms
Roasted Garlic
Onion
Caramelized onions
Basil
Jalapeños
Capers
Artichokes
Squash

A man cuts an heirloom tomato on a wood cutting board.
A top-down view of a cast iron skillet that has sauteed mushrooms on it. The skillet sits on top of a Snow Peak Takibi Fire and Grill.

Cheeses:

Goat cheese
Blue cheese
Ricotta
Feta
Brie

A person places pieces of fresh mozzarella onto a campfire pizza.

Meat Toppings:

Prosciutto
Pancetta
Bacon
Pepperoni
Sausage
Ham

Someone puts prosciutto onto a pizza with red sauce on it while making campfire pizza.

Our Shortcuts & Hacks

Hack number one for making this process easy is to purchase pre-made pizza dough. If you have the time and ingredients to make your own dough ahead of time, there are many recipes online for homemade dough. We were already purchasing a variety of things from Trader Joe’s for the camping trip, so it made sense to pick up a few packages of dough. They are in the refrigerated section, need to be chilled, and are inexpensive. Some grocery stores have frozen dough in the frozen pizza or bread section.

A man confidently spins pizza dough in the air at a campsite while making campfire pizza. A woman looks on skeptically.
A person cuts a pizza containing prosciutto, mozzarella, and tomato sauce. The campfire pizza sits on sheets of aluminum foil.

The next shortcut was using store-bought pizza sauce. With all of these wonderful summertime tomatoes right now, I had every intention of making the sauce myself, but when it came down to it, I ran out of prep time! Things happen! Fortunately, our friend had grabbed a jar of sauce from her pantry. In the end, it saved us from a lot of cooking and cleaning.

A person sprinkles cornmeal onto a heated pizza stone in preparation to make campfire pizza.

Another suggestion is to be generous with the cornmeal, to the point that you feel like you’re using too much. Whether you’re using an open fire or a campfire oven, the intensity of the heat and the combination of the raw dough creates a sticky situation.

Two people stretch out dough onto a pizza peel while making campfire pizza.

This brings me to the next suggestion, pre-baking the dough before putting on the toppings. This helps prevent the dough from becoming soggy, sticking to the pan, and burning (particularly the center- see photo below). Next, sprinkle the cornmeal onto the stone, powder the ball of dough with a pinch of flour, stretch it out and place it onto the stone or pan, and set it on top of the campfire or in the oven for one to two minutes. Once the flour has hardened just a tad, remove, flip the dough over with your spatula, and put your pizza toppings on.

A person pulls a pizza off of a pizza peel and onto aluminum foil while making camfire pizzas.

The Magic Sequence

Prepare, gather, and arrange your toppings on the picnic table.

Preheat your pizza stone or cast iron pan by placing it above the fire or oven.

Liberarlly sprinkle cornmeal onto a pizza peel.

Split the pre-made pizza dough into two balls. Before picking one up, powder the dough with a pinch of flour. To stretch the pizza dough out, flatten the ball and pinch the edges while pulling the dough, stretching it while spinning the disc as you go. When the dough gets stretched and flattened enough, lay it on the pizza peel and, using your fingetips, continue to stretch out the dough on the peel.

Once the dough is flattened enough and ready, slide it onto the pre-heated stone or pan. Place in the oven or on the grate and bake the dough for a minute or two.

A person slips in a pizza into Snow Peak's field oven and Takibi Fire & Grill while making campfire pizza.

Pull the stone out and flip the pizza dough over. Place your sauce and toppings on the pizza and transfer back to the campfire or oven. Bake the pizza for 7-11 minutes, pulling the pizza out and checking the bottom of the crust with a spatula to make sure it’s not burning. That sucker will get hot.

A person picks up a slice of campfire pizza that has goat cheese, olive, ans tomato sauce.

Once the pizza is fully cooked, pull the pizza out and transfer back onto the pizza peel. Since we were making pizza after pizza with the same peel, we ended up transfering the cooked pizzas onto sheets of aluminum paper.

Someone applies balsamic glaze onto a tomato and mozzarella campfire pizza.

Top with any fresh toppings that you might have like basil, balsamic glaze, or parmesan.

Friends gathered around the campfire enjoy slices of pizza at the campsite.

Cut the pizza and enjoy!