Making pizza at home

I tried making pizza a few years ago and it was a total disaster. So I have been avoiding trying pizza for a long time. But time passes, so one Saturday afternoon, I bought dough at Whole Foods and the makings of pizzas.

Co-workers had encouraged me to use the Egg and my thought was, well, if they can do it, so can I!

I bought a dozen good-sized clams. The fishmonger at Whole Foods recommended steaming them to open them and then chopping them up. Then he asked if I am a chef! I told him I just like to cook and he said that we are one of the most knowledgeable customers they have. At least that tied me through the rest of the cooking that day.

I steamed them open and chopped them up.

I made a sauce from my canned tomatoes. Just tomatoes and olive oil to keep the flavor clean. I had bought buffalo mozzarella and a basil plant since my own plant didn't get have decent-sized leaves.

Josh lit the Egg. First grilling of the year so it definitely took longer than usual. We went for high heat, thinking of what we had read about super-high-heat Italian ovens. Co-workers had recommended putting the pizza directly on the plate setter.

So my first pizza was a margherita.

Looks pretty decent, doesn't it? I originally planned to use my thin plastic board to move the pizza onto the grill, but then realized that was stupid, so I put it on the flat size of a sheet pan.

As I moved the pizza onto the grill, part of it folded underneath so that's why you can see that the pizza is folded over here. The bottom was flat black, burned. The rest of the pizza looks pretty good though. We ate it top down.

Try number two. We put the dough on the grill, as we had seen Bobby Flay do on tv. Two minutes and flip!

When it came off the grill, it looked good!

I went for mushroom this time. I had bought cremini msuhrooms and sliced them up as thinly as I could get them.

Same thing happened on the grill, even just on the grill itself. We ate it from the top down again.

I was running out of steam.

Last try was a clam pizza. I did it in the oven, at 400 degrees.

I did just the chopped clams with minced garlic.

Perhaps this time I erred too much on the side of burning. It was sad. I ate the clams off the pizza.

I talked with my co-workers. Apparently, the top heat you should go for in the Egg is 400 for pizza and if it gets too hot -- and the plate setter gets too hot -- then you end up burning your pizza. And I don't think I like the Whole Foods dough. Too floofy.

So I don't know when I might try it again.