Gimme S'mores (Pizza, That Is)!

We're back, everybody! We took a week off our pizza eating while I was traveling for business, and unfortunately my bag containing my laptop and camera (among other things) was taken from the train I was on during that trip. Bugger.

Thankfully, I had already saved a few shots to my other computer of the last pizza we had before my trip. My old college roommate and his wife were visiting from several states away, so we wanted to do something a little fun and different. They'd never had a Papa Murphy's pizza before. We decided that instead of a more traditional choice, pizza for dessert sounded like just the ticket, so we picked ourselves up a S'mores Pizza!

The S'mores Pizza couldn't have been a bigger hit. I've had dessert pizzas before and they were okay, but most of the ones I've liked have had one of three key ingredients: apples, caramel, and cinnamon, or any combination thereof. They were really more akin to a pie or a cinnamon roll than a pizza. The S'mores pizza, on the other hand, comes off looking a bit more like a normal pizza that's been invaded by fanciful toppings. My only hesitation with the S'mores pizza was how the pizza crust would taste combined with the other ingredients; I didn't really want to feel like I was just eating a regular pizza with marshmallows and chocolate, after all. Thankfully, the S'mores didn't disappoint, and tasted like a real sweet treat. It comes topped with real Hershey’s® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and mini marshmallows. There is also some sort of "crisp topping" whose ingredients I'm not sure of aside from the oats you can clearly make out. (And a special thanks to our reader Celeste who brought to my attention the amount of extra work that goes into this pizza and making it so special - there is also a chocolate chip folded into every individual braid in the outer crust ring itself! Chocolate stuffed crust - yummm!)

Fresh from the wrapper

I hope whoever stole our camera at least makes good
use of its awesome macro mode. This looks so yummy!

Once thoroughly browned, it looked like a true dessert. And even better, it certainly tasted the part! This is one we'll definitely be picking up again to take with us to gatherings when we're asked to bring along a dessert, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with a sweet tooth.

It turned out perfect!

Deliciously golden-brown

8 Slices for 6 people ... somebody's going to get hurt.

I had pictures of our friends giving their seal of approvals as they enjoyed their desserts out on the patio with us, but alas, I didn't get those pulled off the camera before its untimely disappearance. So you'll have to make do with this point-of-view shot ... if you hold your nose and cover yours ears while staring intensely, you might be able to trick your brain into thinking it's about to really get a bite. That should hold you over for at least 30 minutes, which gives you plenty of time to go pick up one of your own.  :)

If you have the means, I highly recommend getting out of your chair and picking one of these up immediately!

Saddling Up with the Cowboy Pizza

This week the wife and I have decided to co-op the blog. She wanted to tell you about the pizza, and I wanted to tell you about how I lied to you last week. I'll start.

Last week I stated, "we decided to try something this week we've never done before - grilling a pizza." This is partially true in that we had never grilled a pizza before. But as it turns out, we had forgotten about a little sidebar during an afternoon trip to Lowe's a few years back. On that day, there were some people sitting outside the entrance and they were grilling pizza and giving it away for free. For free! We had a couple of slices, and it was delicious. It also happens to be the first time we ever tried a Papa Murphy's pizza, because that's exactly who the folks grilling all that pizza were with. And now we've come full circle, because this week we cooked up the very same pizza - The Cowboy.

"Courage is being scared to death, but taking the time to finish your slice of pizza anyway."

- John Wayne

Take it away, wife! ...

---

I've got to admit, so far we've been playing it pretty safe in our weekly pizza choices. Most of the pizzas we’ve tried have either been the monthly special or ones we’ve been dying to taste. However, this week we decided to be more adventurous. More daring. More brave. And the pizza that lived up to that kind of hype is rather appropriately named “The Cowboy.” It comes loaded up with pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushrooms, black olives, red pizza sauce, and an herb & cheese blend that is sprinkled all over the top.

Our pizza working its way down the line
(with a Combo Magnifico bring up the rear, it appears)

She's back! And still smiling! We love going
to the South Rutherford Papa Murphy's.

I tend to be a pickier eater than the hubs. There’s not much I could put in front of him that he wouldn’t eat, as he’s proven by eating every single meal I’ve made for him since we’ve been together, no matter how creative the recipe. But the one ingredient that always makes me cringe on a pizza is black olives (shudder). One of the stipulations we’ve given ourselves with our weekly pizzas is to order the pizzas as-is. We may go light on an ingredient, but we leave none out. So if you take a look at the pizza below, you’ll see that by my definition it is loaded with black olives. So buck up, cowgirl!

Presenting "The Cowboy"

Up close with all the toppings

That being said, when the hubs picked up the pizza, an essential ingredient was almost left off, and no, it wasn’t the olives (sigh). Right before the pizza was wrapped, one of the employees realized they'd forgotten to put the “herb and cheese blend” all over the top.  “Oh, glad I caught that!,”  she exclaimed. “This pizza is good anyway, but the blend is what really makes it!” and it was immediately remedied. And she was definitely right.

Family-sized and full of flavor. It's ready!

A little obsessed with macro shots? Maybe. But that is some good looking pizza!

Depth check! This is a pretty standard sized pizza this week.
Family-sized with a regular crust.

So for all my hesitation, I just have to say believe it or not, the olives were really good. Apparently I have been missing out for years. Or maybe I just needed the exact combination of hearty meatiness with earthy veggies and herbs. The olives added a bit of a salty taste, but the mushrooms counteracted that nicely (interjection from the hubs: he says he found the olives kind of meaty tasting when on the pizza. Meaty olives ... ooo-kay. His weird taste buds aside, he really liked them on the pizza, though he's still not a fan of eating olives by themselves, either). There was a solid portion of sausage and pepperoni, which in my book is always good. The red sauce was just the right hint of sweet tomato to compliment the flavors. The herb and cheese blend definitely made the pizza, though. I don’t even have a clue what’s in it, but whatever it is, it’s great. It added the complexity and variety that made me want seconds of this pizza. All in all, it was a great tasting and well-rounded pizza this week!

All sliced up!

Guess which slice is the hubs'?

First-person perspective on dinner!

Hickory-Smoked 5-Meat Stuff Pizza

What do Stanley Ipkiss and Papa Murphy's 5-Meat Stuffed Pizza have in common this week? They're both "Smmmmm-okin'!" (spoiler: that won't be the only corny movie pun in this week's post. I apologize in advance).

The Char-Griller Duo with Smoke Box and the 5-Meat Stuffed Pizza

With Spring well upon us and the smell of charcoal in the neighborhood air many a night, we decided to try something this week we've never done before - grilling a pizza. I've heard so many friends rave about how great it tastes, and the super-meaty 5-Meat Stuffed seemed like the perfect candidate to try it with. Meat and grills just go together, after all. And boy, was I right ... though the experience wasn't without its mistakes and learning opportunities. Maybe you can help us out and provide a few tips? But first, this pizza's story.

It was quite the busy day at the South Rutherford store again this trip, but we had our order in hand fairly speedily, all things considered. It's a bit crazy watching just how much goes into one of these 5-Meat Stuffed pizzas. We weighed it after we got home, and it rang in at a whopping 5 lbs., 4 ounces. Good heavens!

Another busy pizza night in south Murfreesboro

I'll have my meat with some meat and a side of meat, please

More smiling faces! (albeit somewhat camera shy)

We had already decided that we wanted to cook this pizza on our grill, but the question remained - direct heat or not? We're fortunate enough to have a grill that affords us three cooking options - gas, charcoal, or indirect heat and smoke from a side box. We decided we'd go for broke and actually smoke this pizza with some charcoal and wet hickory chips.

We added a little flour to the pizza peel to help the pizza slide on and off.
It was a bit tricky getting it off the cooking sheet initially, so be careful
not to tear the crust and take your time if you're trying this.

Hickory wood chips that were soaked in water for a few hours prior

We got some tips from a couple of friends on Facebook and also read a how-to article on SimplyRecipes.com beforehand, though we ended up winging most of it. The article was for a homemade pizza and suggested grilling one side of the dough before adding any toppings, which we couldn't do with our pre-topped one. And our friends were grilling and smoking their pizzas with the heat directly beneath, whereas we were going to use our smoke box attached to the side of the grill. So we figured we'd just get the grill up to 375°F and keep it there for about 25 to 30 minutes. It sounded fairly logical, and had I known a little more about the heating capabilities of charcoal, it probably would've turned out a little better (or at the very least, a little faster).

Thermometer says it's time to add the pizza!

Now we're cooking with smoke!

Mrs. Friend, Mr. Friend, and Mini-Friend hanging out
on the patio and enjoying the smell of grilling pizza

Thing 1 and Thing 2, yelling at the cook
for no other reason than "because we can." 

Getting the grilling chamber up to 375° took a little while, but after adding the pizza, I found it nearly impossible to maintain a temperature above 350°. As it turns out, if you want to cook with indirect heat in a setup like this and you require a higher temperature, you should be burning wood as your main fuel source, not charcoal. Wood burns hotter than charcoal, and our fire simply couldn't get enough hot enough to keep the temperature we needed (and I probably wasted a lot more charcoal than necessary while trying). Since all my friends who grilled with charcoal and wood chips were doing so directly underneath their pizzas, they didn't have this issue, and it simply never crossed my mind that indirect heat would make such a big difference. Also to note if you are reading this article and and curious about smoking your pizza with wood: if you are using charcoal as your main source of heat, you need to soak your wood chips before adding them to your grill. If you are burning wood as the main heat source, then it should be dry and stripped as free of bark as possible (we bought our hickory wood chips pre-bagged from Publix and Wal-Mart).

It's as ready as it will ever be

Tools of the trade

I wish this picture was scratch-n-sniff ... this smelled sooo good!

The good news is that the pizza still turned out well, and it tasted amazing! The only two blemishes were that the top-center portion of the upper crust was still doughy in an area about as big as a half-dollar coin, and the bottom edge of the pizza closest to the firebox opening had burned ever so slightly. When it came time to eat it, though, I ended up with the burnt piece and never even realized it until I was on my last bite. The doughy part wasn't unexpected due to our lower heat and longer cooking time, especially since you had a second crust up top on these stuffed pizzas. The burnt section was due to my negligence in remembering some comments about this grill when I bought it. Their is obviously a lot more heat in the grill on the side where the smoke box connects, and I didn't think about this when I placed the pizza on the grill. The heat from the smoke box rises as it first enter the grill and cooks that side faster. What I should have done was place my pizza on the grill as far from the smoke box opening as possible, and then rotated it halfway through cooking to get a more even heat to the crust. But live and learn. It was a fun experience and we have some good lessons learned to apply to our endeavors next time!

Pizza Cutter depth check

That is some serious pizza right there

I have never eaten a smoked pizza before, and it blew my mind just how much flavor the hickory smoke added. It's honestly hard to describe what this pizza tastes like, because I feel that it would have been completely different different coming out of the oven. The grill added a real depth to the taste - a very warm, bold flavor. The smell alone was incredible, and I'm surprised half the neighborhood wasn't beating down our door. Naturally, this was a very meaty dinner - the 5-Meat Stuffed comes packed with pepperoni, Italian sausage, bacon, ground beef, and Canadian bacon. If "awesome" was an ingredient, I would suggest that someone had thrown that in while I had my head turned at the store, too.

The 5 lbs.+ behemoth really showed just what a monster it was when we sliced it up for serving. We cut our family-sized pizza into 8 slices, and between the four of us, no one managed more than a single slice. Which if you're doing the math, still comes out to over a half-pound of pizza per slice. Insane.

"Use the Fork, Luke. Trust me." (I told you there'd be another movie pun, didn't I?)

The next time we smoke a pizza, we're planning to do it with indirect heat again, but with wood as the main fuel source. And we'll most likely do it with a non-stuffed pizza, which should lower the necessary cooking time. We also plan to try grilling a pizza directly over charcoal sometime soon, as well as on the gas side of our grill with a foil box holding some soaked wood chips. So, fellow pizza grillers and smokers - any tips, tricks, or suggestions for our next attempts?

My 10 oz. slice of pizza

Everybody caught on camera smiling at once - it's a pizza night miracle!

Cooking Up The Combo Magnifico - Papa Murphy's Newest Pizza Creation

I'd love to say that we're a week behind on blogging due to some marvelously fascinating event. "My first bite of the brand new Combo Magnifico pizza was immediately followed by a phone call from Michael Bay insisting I fill the primary role for Transformers 4. A role I regrettably had to turn down due to Chuck Norris showing up as I took my second bite, telling me to put down the phone and finish my slice, or else ..."

The Combo Magnifico, Up Close and Personal Before Cooking

Truth be told, however, we brought our pizza home, had a wonderful little picnic outside in the pollen factory that is middle Tennessee in April, and then came down with horrible sinus pains a few hours later. It was so bad that I never could sleep and had to call in to work the following day. Then the Easter festivities began, and the weekend became the week, and the week became mid-week, and now here we are.

But enough of the excuses and pity parties - we still got to have our pizza picnic, after all, and we have a brand new pizza to talk about!

Building the Combo Magnifico

Familiar Smiling Faces!

This week we brought home the brand new Combo Magnifico pizza. It's the first pizza in Papa Murphy's new Italia line. The major differences between this pizza and your standard Papa Murphy's pies are a new pizza sauce along with a new type of crust, which Papa Murphy's describes as "not-too-thick, not-too-thin crust." That description doesn't roll of the tongue quite like "Thin Crust" or "Deep Dish," but you have to give them credit for calling it just what it is. The Combo Magnifico comes topped with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, and onions. The cheese is mix of mozzarella and parmesan along with some herbs.

Ready for the oven

Is it pizza yet?

All cooked up and ready to slice 'n serve

We found the new crust to be a great balance between the thin crusts on the deLITE pizzas and the standard crust. More of that satisfying crust flavor like what you get with the standard crusts, but a bit lighter on the stomach and perceptibly less guilty feelings when grabbing an extra slice. We'll most likely request our next regular pizza order  be put on the Italia crust, too, just to mix things up a bit.

Up close and personal, post-cooking. Those toppings look good! 

Pizza cutter depth reference check

For as much as I enjoyed the new crust, I have to say that I'm still more of a fan of the regular pizza sauce. The new "zesty red sauce" tasted very good, but it seemed a bit sweeter to me than the standard sauce. Taste is obviously a very subjective experience, and I love that Papa Murphy's has introduced a couple of new sauces in the past month for folks who do prefer a slightly sweeter experience. More choices are always better! But for me, while I very much enjoyed this pizza overall, their tried and true regular pizza sauce remains steadfastly atop my favorites list.

Sliced and ready for consuming!

If your mouth had eyes ...

I asked the wife to sum up the new pizza in one word, and after contemplating a bite for a few seconds, she replied, "Gourmet-y." Made up words aside, I'm inclined to agree with her. Something about the culmination of all the Magnifico's ingredients just gave it a more "gourmet" flavor than your standard pizza. After a couple of weeks of meat-focused pizzas, I also enjoyed the balancing flavors from the mushrooms and onions this week. Overall, the ingredients all work very well together, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other Italia pizzas are offered in the future.

Excited about having a front yard picnic!

Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry and the Combo Magnifico ... Yum!

It was so pretty out this past week that we decided to throw a quilt on the front lawn and have ourselves a pizza picnic. Killer pollen allergies waiting to strike aside, it was a lovely evening. And we found out that we weren't the only Papa Murphy's fans in the yard. I don't know what species this little fellow is (and I'm resisting the urge to sound more informed than I truly am by Googling it prior to writing this), but he really loves this pizza. So much so that he not only risked getting within arms reach of a 17-month-old to have a few nibbles, but actually let his guard down long enough that she managed to sneak a quick *flick* to his tail that finally sent him retreating to the nearby tree.

Our drop-in guest

Hey Mikey, I think he likes it

Stayed tuned for another blog update this week; even though we got a week behind in our posts, we're still on track with our weekly pizzas, and our latest one from last night was something a bit different and fun that we hope to get some feedback (and tips) on from our readers. Spoiler alert - it also weighed in at a massive 5 lbs, 4 ounces!