Menu Musings of a Modern American Mom: Grilled Pizza

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Grilled Pizza

Quickly add the ingredients - cheese first! Then close the lid and allow the heat to melt the topping and glue it all together while the bottom is cooking. You have to have it all lined up and act quickly on this.
Then Presto!

This has been on my to-do list for quite a while now. I've run past this grilled pizza in Steven Raichlen's How to Grill recipe so many times and have wanted to try it. I'm very glad we did... it was awesome. But let's just say it's probably not going to make it to your quick and easy weeknight menu.

Grilled Pizza

There is nothing hard about this recipe, but it is quite a multi-step process. Just make sure to have all of your toppings prepped before hand. The pizza will need to be assembled out on the grill, you everything has to be ready, transported outside, and arranged quickly at the end of the process.

For the dough:
1 envelope active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
3 1/2 cups white flour, plus more for kneading
1 1/2 tsp course salt
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for later

For the Topping:
1 bunch fresh basil, chopped into ribbons
2 - 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lg sweet onion, thinly sliced
Stips of red and orange bell peppers
1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage
Course salt and black pepper
4 large ripe cherry tomatoes, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices (or 2 medium sized tomatoes)
6 oz fresh mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced

Extra virgin olive oil for grilling the dough
Non-stick spray for the grill

Topping Prep

I keep frozen onion and pepper stips in the freezer. This speeds up my dinner prep and the frozen strips break down in the cooking process faster than the fresh ones.

Mix extra virgin olive oil and butter for sauteeing the veggies.

3 large cloves of fresh garlic

minced well

To remove extra moisture from the sliced tomatoes, sprinkle with sea salt first. This will draw out the water.

Then add another couple of layers of paper towels and weigh down with something (I used a cutting board). You don't want the pizza to be soggy with all of that water that comes from the fresh tomatoes.

Saute the veggies until soft and slightly caramelized.

Add the chopped garlic towards the last couple of minutes as you don't want it to burn.

Remove casings from Italian sausage first.

Crumble and brown in a nonstick pan.

Drain on paper towels.

Sliced fresh mozzarella

Quickly fry the tomatoes in a skillet front and back in a little extra virgin olive oil. Season simply with course salt and pepper.

Chop fresh basil

Dough prep:

Knead the dough about 5 minutes, turning a quarter turn and stretching as you go. Will become lovely and silky.

Add to an oiled pan and turn to coat. Cover and let rest in a warm place until it doubles in size (about an hour). *To save time, you can put in the microwave for 2 minutes on Power 1, let rest 10 min. Repeat two more times. Should leave an imprint when you poke your finger into it and not bounce back.

Cut the dough ball in half. With half at a time, stretch out into a free form rectangle about 9"x13" in an oiled sheet pan. The olive oil will help the dough to blister and get crunchy on the grill. Don't worry about the shape. It doesn't matter. That's the beauty of it.

Pizza Cooking:

Spray the grill with non-stick spray. Turn down the very hot grill to medium just before adding the dough. After about 3-5 minutes, it will blister and brown on the bottom and get stiff. Turn with tongs and/or large spatula.

The cooked bottom becomes the top. Doesn't it look yummy?!

Brush the crust with olive oil.

All you need is a nice glass of something to drink and someone to help you eat this beautiful pizza pie!
Cheers!!

Would you like to see more recipes? Please visit my Recipe Index for tons of ideas that you can make with/for you family.
Here are a few to pique your curiosity: