Campfire Pizza – A Camping Favorite

Evan misses camping. He waxes poetic about our trailer and all the places we went. Honestly, there are parts of it that I miss too but I love, love, love our cottage. Since we know that he misses camping, we try to embrace some of the things he loved most that we can still do at the cottage. One of these things (for him and the big kids too) is campfire pizza.

They have a hard core love affair with these homemade pizza pockets cooked over a campfire. When we were camping, pizzas would often come out as a late night snack which meant that Evan quite often missed out. Here, we don’t eat late night snacks around the campfire as often, so we are more likely to have them as an easy dinner around the fire. Evan thinks we should have them every night.

One thing that campfire pizzas do require is a set of pie irons. We love ours. We have friends that use theirs to make campfire desserts but we haven’t gotten around to trying that yet. We’re too stuck on the pizzas (and we usually run out of bread by the time the kids are full). We like the smaller, round pie irons because it seals the edges of the pizza. The square ones may as well but we haven’t tried them out. Plus the round ones mean no crusts which makes the kids happy.

After you have the pie irons, the options are endless. Normally, I buy salami for the campfire pizzas but just about anything will do in a pinch. The last time we made them, we used bologna. I was not convinced but they tasted great.

Campfire Pizza Tips:

• Always spray your pie irons with cooking spray before you make a pizza (and before each new one you make).
• Make sure your toppings will make it into the pizza (i.e. put everything in the middle of the bread because the edges will be cut off).
• Cheaper, smaller bread loaves work better and you waste less bread (you can see how much bread hung off from our grainy loaf above. Normal whole wheat sandwich bread hangs off much less).
• Don’t go overboard on sauces. A dollop of pizza sauce goes a long way.
• Pre-shredded cheese is your friend.
• Take everything out to the campfire all at once so that you can easily make your pizzas without having to make 20 trips. You’ll need:
  • Bread
  • Cooking spray
  • meat (if you are using it. Cheese pizzas work too!)
  • shredded cheese
  • pizza sauce
  • steak knife (to trim excess bread)
• After you’ve trimmed your campfire pizza, place the pie iron in the coals and flip as needed to toast the outside. Watch carefully or they will burn!
• Let cool for a few moments before you bite in because they will be HOT.
• Note: Using ham lunch meat can be dangerous. It tends to be hard to bite through and it will pull out, slap you in the chin & leave a burn mark (ask me how I know).

Do you make campfire pizzas? What is your favorite camping food?