Sun Pizza

It's been a week of extreme ups and downs for me. On Tuesday I made my first ever t.v. appearance, on Wednesday my favorite cat died. On Thursday and Saturday I attended two Sun Oven demos held by Paul Munsen of Sun Ovens Int. Today all I wanted to do was kick back and eat something fun.

Many food critics, professional and non, will tell you that one of the best pizza places in the U.S. is Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. I've been there once and their pizza is divine, but it comes with more than one catch and I'm not talking about price. It's only open for dinner, closed Sundays and the wait is at least three and a half hours. People line up before it opens to get their name on the list. Not exactly my idea of a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

The last time I made pizza in the solar oven I was disappointed with the result. The crust was soggy and the cheese overcooked. I figured adding the toppings after letting the dough bake until almost done would yield better results. After all, the tomato sauce is already cooked, it only needs to heat up and the cheese only needs to melt. I used purchased dough from Fresh and Easy. The package says it makes one twelve inch pizza but I like a thinner crust. I get two pizzas from one package. I baked the base for about twenty minutes before putting the toppings on it. Then I let it bake about ten more minutes until the cheese had melted. The red pizza is topped tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, olives and basil. The white pizza has goat cheese, mozzarella cheese, olive oil and pepper on it.

Solar baked pizza is not something you can just put in the oven and forget about, but it is easy and fun to make. Pre-baking the crust made all the difference. It was much better this time. And it's a whole lot more relaxing than standing around in the 105º Phoenix heat waiting for a table at Pizzeria Bianco.