Jake’s Bubble Pizza
Ingredients:
12-inch Dutch oven with 15 coals on top, 9 coals below
18 frozen dinner rolls, slightly thawed (or two large tubes refrigerated biscuits)
30 pieces pepperoni (or favorite meat topping)
1 cup pizza or pasta sauce
⅛ tsp. garlic powder
⅛ tsp. paprika
½ tsp. Italian seasoning
⅛ tsp. onion powder
¼ tsp. basil
1 cup shredded cheese
Cooking spray
Optional: chopped onions, olives, peppers, or other pizza topping favorites.
Spray inside of Dutch oven with cooking spray. Cut rolls into fourths with kitchen scissors. Cut pepperoni pieces in half.
Add sauce and sprinkle spices evenly on top and gently stir to distribute spices and meat evenly. Let rise until the volume doubles, about 45 minutes to an hour. If you use tube biscuit dough, you don’t need to wait for rising.
Place oven on top of charcoal briquettes and place briquettes on lid. Don’t peek for 25 minutes. Lift lid and check for “doneness.” An additional five minutes or longer may be needed, depending on weather.
Remove oven from coals. Using heavy gloves, invert the pot onto the lid. Carefully lift off pot. You may have to run a knife carefully around the inside of the oven to loosen the pizza before inverting. Turn pizza right-side-up onto a wire rack or clean surface.
Top with shredded cheese, let melt for five minutes, and serve.
Serves: 4 to 6
H. Kent Rappleye, a former president of the International Dutch Oven Society, is an Eagle Scout and Vigil Honor member of the Order of the Arrow.
Instead of spraying the dutch oven and inverting the pizza onto the lid, place an oversize sheet of parchment paper on the bottom and build your pizza on it. When the pizza is done just hold onto two opposite corners and lift out the done pizza.
A better solution is to use Pita bread for the crust. When I was responsible for Cub Scout Family Camp, we had a bucket of ground beef, a bucket of sausage, a bucket of ham, pepperoni, cans of various veggies, big bags of shredded cheese, and spaghetti sauce. The kids would smear a spoonful of spaghetti sauce on their Pita bread, add toppings, then take them over to dutch ovens with a half-dozen or so on the bottom, and 10-18 on top. 3-8 minutes, depending, and the kids could eat. It worked for finicky eaters, if they didn’t like what they tried they could try again, and everyone was happy.