How to Bake a Deep Dish Pizza Using a Camp Stove and a Propane Torch

This whole camping thing makes me hungry. As we started to get into camping, the key question in my mind was "how can I bake a Chicago Style Pizza with a camp stove?" With a bit of McGuyver engineering, a trip to Harbor Freight, and a propane torch, I figured it out. 

    First, you need some kind of "oven" that will turn the heat from the burner into hot air. You can buy a pre-made ovens by Coleman or Bemco that work great. The cost is modest, they're well made and have many positive reviews from random internet experts. But I'd rather spend half a day burning myself and various food items trying to save a few bucks, so I decided to go the "DIY" route. 

Enclosing the camp stove in a cardboard box with tinfoil to reflect the heat

    My first attempt involved duct tape. It seemed like a good place to start. 

The cardboard box / tinfoil / duct tape approach really didn't work. Probably a good thing I gave up as it likely would have ended up on fire. No picture of this one, it was a pretty sorry failure. If you find yourself duct taping cardboard together to make some new camping gear. Just stop. I ran through quite a bit of duct tape before I stopped. 

Aluminum flashing topped by a skillet with a baking pan inside balanced on a brick

    Ok, this is not the most portable stove. While the flashing is light, the brick really makes it less backpack friendly. I did this as more of a test, the plan was to replace the brick if things worked out.  I did not want to put a whole pizza at risk, so simply made some cornbread. 

    My second attempt at an oven worked very well, but was made out of aluminum flashing and was kind of a pain to get set up. All the little cuts from the sharp aluminum edges didn't make the cornbread taste any better. 

The Harbor Freight Stainless Steel Pot Oven

    

 While grabbing a few items at Harbor Freight, I noticed a set of stainless steel pots incredibly cheap. With a coupon I think I paid about $15 for 5 pots, ranging from 4 qts to one large enough to boil a Rottweiler. (apologies to folks who prefer their dog grilled)  Since this is Harbor Freight, the pots were incredibly cheaply made, very thin metal. In the real world "thin" = cheap. In the backpacking world "thin" = expensive. So I snagged the pots in case I ever need to burn a large pot of something for a group, and I suspected that I might be able to use one of them as an oven.

A scrap of bunny wire from a hutch I recently built, and my oven was complete.

    ALDI (the Harbor Freight of grocery stores), had a good deal on silicone pans, so I picked  up this pan. With a bit of trimming, it sat perfectly within the 2nd largest pot in the Harbor Freight set. The bunny wire helped to isolate the pan from the bottom of the pot. 

    So, lets get down to how you do this.

 1) Oil the pan
2)  Make a crust - homemade, "just add water" crust mix, chuck a pre-made crust in there, whatever
3) Add sauce, toppings, etc
4) Lower into pot to balance the pizza on top of the bunny wire
5) Set the camp stove to it's highest setting. Buy a bigger  stove if this doesn't work.
6) Remove the pizza when the underside of the crust is done. The top will be gooey and undone when the bottom is done. Instead of assuming you failed...continue to the next step.
7) Go find a propane torch and blast the top of the pizza to finish.


And there you have it.....couldn't be any easier.

Why would a fat guy take up hiking? For your amusement.

   

 
      Hiking. What a ridiculous activity. Going for a walk for the sake of..umm...walking. To quote my daughter: "this walk walk walking is good practice for walk walk walking."   I think a donut and a cup of coffee makes a bit more sense than "walk walk walking." Oh,  and it's walking with a big heavy weight on your back. Why? So you can sleep on the ground and not shower for a few days. Yeah, that's pretty stupid.

    So how did a sensible person like me (and I am quite sensible, I agree with myself over 90% of the time), get into hiking? Am I a fitness buff?  I'm really more like 2 of them, speaking in terms of total mass.

    One day, while sitting in traffic after a stressful day in the office, I  looked up and decided "life is more than this."

    Ok, I made that up. The real reason is a bit less noble.

    The real answer is "guilt." Yes, good old guilt. My son  pulled me into a "father/son" activity, and I didn't want to be lame by not going. And after a couple trips, a very odd thing happened...I realized I like hiking. As for sleeping on the ground, I still do not understand that part of camping.

     Specifically, we have recently gotten involved with a Battalion group, the middle school / high school group for Christian Service Brigade. (at Annapolis Evangelical Presbyterian, a sister church to our church)  CSB is not unlike Boy Scouts, they have uniforms, merit badges, go on camping trips, etc. But the particular group my son has joined skips the badges and uniforms, and has narrowed it down to hiking, dodgeball, service in the local church, and training the next generation of Christian young men. In the past year, I've really enjoyed the Battalion trips, spending time with the other dads, and the boys.

     But this blog is not specifically about Battalion...instead it will try to focus on the things I'm learning about hiking, and the numerous mistakes along the way.

 

   

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