Baking pizza without an oven

Question

How can I bake a pizza without an oven (or any other fancy stuff, so no suggesting of charcoal, sun oven, and so on).

Just using a plain heating element on the bottom, like a burner, what are the alternatives? What is better than a pizza on the frying pan?

Can I put a pizza stone on a burner, or would the direct heat crack it?

Answer 1

Placing a pizza stone directly on a burner will likely lead to cracking. If you are limited to stove-top cooking, there are two routes that you might use to make pizza.

First option, steal some of the techniques used for making grilled pizza:

• Preheat a large skillet medium-high with its lid in place.
• Cook the crust on one side, flip it over, then place the toppings while the second side cooks.
• Cover the pizza after it has been topped.

Second option, use (or improvise) a dutch oven:

• Preheat a large cast iron skillet or dutch oven over medium-high either with its lid in place, or heat the lid on a separate burner.
• Stretch the dough inside a pie tin and up it's sides.
• Top with sauce, cheese, pepperoni, etc.
• Place 4 wads of aluminum foil in dutch oven to raise pie tin off bottom.
• Set pizza in dutch oven and cook.

In either case you will be limited to making fairly small pizzas. Keep your crust relatively thin. A thick crust is going to burn before it is fully cooked inside. It may also be beneficial to pre-cook as many of your toppings as possible prior to placing them on the pizza.

Answer 2

Do you have access to a grill (a UK grill that is - I belive the US term is a broiler?).Heston tries a few different ways here, and one that gives reasonable results is to take a heavy iron pan, heat it (he does it in an oven, but hob should be fine), then puts the pizza into the pan and under a super hot broiler. Seems to work.

With just a hob is basically impossible as you need an overhead heat source to cook and brown the toppings.

Answer 3

I would say that you cannot cook pizza without an oven. A true pizza needs a giant wallop of heat on the bottom, to form the crust, but also needs to be surrounded by high heat in order for the dough to rise and the cheese to melt properly. You might be able to simulate a stove-top oven with a cast iron pan and a cover. You would probably need to make a fairly small pizza. A potential problem would be the bottom getting hotter than you want and the top being cooler than you want.