Grate pizza: When it's too hot to cook, fire up the grill and throw on a pie

Conflict: Pizza is on your mind and menu. But triple-digit heat outside and air-conditioned temps inside give you pizza pause. Crank up the oven? Crank down the thermostat to compensate?

Resolution: Keep that kitchen cool and take your pizza dreams outdoors.

The resulting smoky-tinged dough topped with some garlic Fontina or Pecorino Romano, grilled marinated chicken bits and perhaps your own garden-fresh produce is worth learning a few outdoor-grill pizza techniques.

When you've got to have a pie, you've got to have a pie. It's just pizza math: The average American eats 43 slices a year. And the folks at Weber grills estimate at least 80 percent of us grill at least once a week.

"Our motto is, if you can eat it, you can grill it," says Elizabeth Karmel, co-author of a new cookbook, "Pizza on the Grill: 100 Feisty Fire-Roasted Recipes for Pizza & More" (Taunton Press, $16, 154 pages). Her coauthor and best foodiefriend is Bob Blumer.

"We literally bonded over grilled pizza," Karmel says. She lives in Chicago, where she grills year-round on the balcony of her loft. "Bob and I approach pizza crust as a blank canvas. Then we take all of our favorite flavors and turn it into an edible work of art."

Diana Hayden of Elk Grove isn't sure she'd classify her grilled pizza as art, but she does know pizza is one of her favorite things to grill.

"I'm a Food Network junkie," says Hayden. "A few years ago, I noticed a lot of the celebrity chefs like Bobby Flay and Wolfgang Puck were doing grilled pizza, so we decided to give it a try. It's not that difficult, and it's really fun to see what combinations we can come up with."

What makes grilled pizza so wonderful and sets it aside from pizzeria pizza is the crispy, smoky crust, says Karmel.

You can use a store-bought dough or make one from scratch. Both work just fine.

"I like to make my own, and it's not that difficult," Hayden says. "But when I'm stressed for time, the fresh, pre-made doughs are quite good."

Two things are important to keep in mind when making pizza dough: You need to use a lot of grits or cornmeal on the rolling surface to keep the dough from sticking, and the dough needs to be very thin when you roll it out.

"Besides keeping the dough from sticking, the cornmeal adds some gritty texture to the finished crust," Karmel says. "It doesn't matter what shape the pizza is - round, oblong or freeform - it needs to be thin because it will rise and it becomes thicker as it cooks."

After you've rolled out the dough, add a good coating of olive oil over both sides to keep it from sticking and to make it crispy. Preheat the grill to medium heat, which is about 350 degrees if your grill doesn't have a medium setting. Open up the grill and gently lay the rolled dough directly on the grate. Don't worry - it won't fall through.

"You need to make sure the grill is preheated to medium, not hot," says Karmel. "If it's too hot, the dough will burn like a piece of paper. You also need to close the lid to the grill quickly after you place the dough on the grate. That keeps the heat in and gets the crust cooking quickly."

Grill one side of the dough until it is nicely browned and has good grill marks. Slide a rimless cookie sheet under it to make it easier to remove from the grill. Flip it over, cooked side up, add your toppings and slide it back on to the grill to finish cooking.

A topping can be anything that sounds good. Most people at least add a sauce and some cheese, but even that is up to you. Think beyond basic tomato sauce. Hoisin, pesto and onion marmalade all make good options.

"My favorite is Margherita pizza, which has no meat," says Hayden. "I do it with garlic Fontina and Pecorino Romano cheeses, chiffonade (shredded) basil and fresh tomatoes. One thing I've learned about using fresh tomatoes is to add them after the pizza is cooked. If you cook the pizza with the tomatoes on, it will be soggy. I just sprinkle the diced tomatoes over it after it comes off the grill."

Karmel says her favorite is grilled pineapple with ham.

"What you need to keep in mind about the toppings is that anything that can be eaten raw, such as cheese, can be placed on the pizza as is," says Karmel. "Anything that needs to be cooked before you eat it, such as chicken or sausage, needs to be cooked first. Pizza cooks so quickly on the grill that raw toppings don't have time to cook before the pizza is done."

Karmel adds that pizza is easy to master. "Just do it once and you'll be an expert," she says.

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