DIY Grilled Pizza

Hey, this photo was featured over at Endless Simmer!

Aaahh!  This post got a little wordy.  I try to KISS (keep it short and simple), but even though this is not visibly short, I made it super duper simple.  Trust me.

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I was prepared for this not to work out.  I had a back up pizza dough ready to go, just in case.

But you know what?  I developed the perfect grilled pizza system.

I'm going to share it with you today.  It is designed to keep kitchen clean up to the absolute minimum while maximizing your time for pizza enjoyment.

First, let me give you my tried and true pizza dough recipe.  It's in my head.  I went through a time where I literally made homemade pizza once (sometimes twice) a week.  You don't have to grill the pizza if you don't want to (or if you don't have a grill).  You can also top with toppings & bake (after rising time) at 450 degrees for about 10-15 minutes.

So, step one of the pizza system is to gather these ingredients:

Pizza Dough

serves 4

2 1/2 cups flour (I used half all purpose flour and half whole wheat flour)

1 packet of instant, fast acting yeast

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup warm water

1 tbsp olive oil

non-stick spray

more flour and olive oil for preparation 

Ok, so get out one big bowl, 1 2 cup measuring cup, 1 teaspoon and 1 tablespoon.  These are all the dishes you need.

Here's my breakdown of events necessary to reach optimal levels of awesomeness:

• Fill up the 2 cup measuring cup with your flour, dump in bowl, then add the other 1/2 cup.  Add the tsp of salt on top of the flour.
• Use the same measuring cup and add sugar, yeast and hot water.
• Let the yeast, water, sugar mixture sit for about 5 minutes until totally frothy.  Whisk your salt and flour together while you are waiting.
• Make a little dent in the middle of the flour mix in the bowl & pour in 1 tbsp olive oil, followed by frothy yeasty water mix.  Don't add all the water mix.  Just a little more than half.
• Stir it all up with a spatula until combined.  Add more water mixture if necessary.  You want the dough to look kind of crumbly still.
• Work it with your hands a bit (kind of knead it) until it is kind of stretchy and awesome.
• Pick the dough up with one hand and spray the bowl with non-stick spray with the other hand.  Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel and let it rise for about an hour.

*ONE HOUR LATER*

imagine that was said in voice from Spongebob!

Prepare your grill for pizza grilling time.
We have a small, gas grill that gets super hot.  I've never done this on a charcoal grill, so you'll have to do some Googling if you need modifications.

*Turn your grill on medium, high heat and then clean the grates with grill brush.

*Go back inside and lay out a piece of aluminum foil, spray with non-stick spray and roll half of your pizza dough out on it (I used a floured rolling pin, but you could always just use your hands). I kind of made it into an oval. I was going for a rectangle, but I'm geometrically challenged.

*Put a little olive oil on the top of the rolled out dough.

*Get back outside with a paper towel and some olive oil. Pour some olive oil on your folded paper towel and hold it with some grilling tongs while oiling the grill grates.

*Ok, slide your aluminum foil with the dough on it onto like a tray or a sheet pan and carry it outside and place the top (oiled) side down on the grill, then peel the aluminum foil away.

*Close the grill and cook for about 5 minutes. While this is cooking, hustle your bum inside and prepare some toppings.

*Once the side that is down on the grill looks pretty grill-tastic, carefully put the pizza with the uncooked side down on the sprayed aluminum foil (I used the grill tongs) and go put your toppings on the side that is already cooked.

*Place uncooked side down on the grill and close the lid for another 5 minutes or until toppings look done-ish.

Repeat with the other half of the dough if you want or freeze it for later like I did.

I guess I did some boring toppings.  I didn't know how this would work, so I didn't want to waste a bunch of toppings on something that was going in the trash (that's either really low self confidence or really smart planning-not sure which).

I topped my pizza with a light layer of basil tomato sauce, freshly sliced mozzarella, tomato slices with dried basil and parmesan.  Kind of like a margherita pizza?

Well, whatever.  This was the bomb-diggity.  It was so good that I'm bringing back 90's slang.

This pizza has the perfect crispy, thin-ish crust with just a hint of grill flavor.

If you don't want to do the whole wait an hour for the pizza to rise thing, try a no-rise pizza dough.

But think of all the stuff you could get done in that hour of rise time...house chores, take a walk, go run some errands, take a bath, watch half of a movie.  Endless possibilities.

Try a grilled pizza this weekend and impress your friends, family, but most of all-yourself.

Did I sound like a motivational speaker?  Well, hopefully I motivated you to grill some pizzas!