Grilled Pizza

Grilled pizza w/ Shitake, tomatoes and 2 cheeses

For a long time, the Holy Grail in my kitchen has been the perfect pizza dough. I’ve read and researched, measured flour, added honey, I’ve used powdered and cake yeast, and I’ve made countless doughs. I’ve had some respectable pizza, but I feel that my dough can always be better. What I’m after is a thin crust, chewy and light, not soggy or heavy.  For me the best pizza emerges from the mouth of a wood fired brick oven; that’s wood, not coal. Face it; I’ve been at this for years, and no, I don’t have a wood fired oven, which, at the end of the day, is what I always attribute my less than stellar pizza success upon. Then along comes Rosaria several weeks ago with some pages snatched and ripped out from one of those food glossies which was extolling the virtues of grilled pizza.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I snipped, “Grilled PIZZA?” Occasionally, I have the unpleasant habit of rolling my eyes heavenward, and occasionally muttering something like “phu-leeez!”  This was one of those times. She ceremoniously nudged at the sheet across the island, and urged me to take a look, turned on her heel and left in a huff. I can’t remember what I was fiddling with at the cutting board, probably something gooey or bloody, because I didn’t get to look at the grilled pizza page for a while. When I sat down and read it, the recipe and process made sense, but what caught my eye was that the author had used store bought, frozen pizza dough. STORE-BOUGHT-FROZEN! My first inclination was to add this piece of paper to the peelings and just dispose of in the garbage. But I paused, said to myself, as the Brits say, “Hold on a tic”, I’ve used the grill to great success in making Naan bread, Pullman loaves, and I’ve baked my own pizza dough on a baking stone in the grill. (The grill gets hotter than either of my convection ovens.) So why not!? Next time one of us is in the supermarket, I’ll try to remember to pickup some frozen pizza dough.

Grilled pizza w/ black olives & Mexican cheeses

Naturally, Rosaria was all over this like a swarm of bees on a field full of buttercups. The next day I found several frozen lumps of pizza dough in our freezer, and one thawing in the refrigerator. To tell you the truth I don’t remember what was on the first grilled pizza I made, I think it had eggplant on it with chopped olives and goat cheese. What I do recall was the crust: it was just this side of razor thin, fairly chewy with a wonderful smoky taste (probably attributable to not having thoroughly scrubbed the grates on the grill with a steel brush) and the toppings, a pleasant warm temperature mingled with the melted cheese. After that outing, I made grilled pizza four or five times that week, each time changing the toppings. My first one had been beginner’s luck. The key to it was maintaining a sentry’s watch over the crust on the grill and regulating the heat. Exhausting our dough supply, I happened to be in that market again, sort of off the beaten path, that had the frozen pizza dough Rosaria brought home, and I picked up several packages. Since then, I’ve used this dough product exclusively and I’m convinced that the producer, out of plain old fashion American parsimoniousness, skimps on the yeast in the dough. In this case, that’s a good thing. The result is an excellent, thin crust, with a great chewy quality to it, that is easily controlled on a hot grill.

Last Saturday, my mother-in-law and father-in-law newly returned from Florida, dropped by for lunch. While they were at it, they gave our daughter a ride home for the weekend. She was visiting them from NYC where she is now gainfully employed, sorely missing the bounty of 2gourmaniacs’ kitchen, and an avid commenter about all things edible. So, of course I had to make a grilled pizza for our lunch.

I chopped and sautéed a handful of shitake mushrooms. Next I thinly sliced and sautéed 4 small “Indian” eggplants. I minced several cloves of garlic and added it to the eggplants as they sautéed. While I was at it, I sliced half of a medium sized onion and sautéed it until translucent about 5 minutes on medium heat. As my ingredients finished cooking, I put them in individual bowls.  And believe it or not, I took out a bag of store bought shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese to use with the toppings, and I used some of my tomato sauce made after tomato picking last September.

Grilled pizza w/ eggplant and green olives

Then I took the now room temperature pizza dough, put it on floured work surface – in this case my wood cutting board – and rolled it with a large rolling pin into a rectangle 13”x19”x1/8”. (What I love about this dough is that it isn’t very elastic, and it holds its shape without snapping back into a smaller dimension. Also when it hits the grill it doesn’t rise or get “bubbles”.) I picked up the dough and placed it over the floured exterior bottom of a 19”x13” baking pan (you’d think I’d have a metal peel, but I don’t). I stretched and massaged it until the edges just drooped over the edge of the pan. I took a bottle of olive oil and splattered the dough with oil, brushing it evenly all over the dough surface. I grabbed the pan with the dough on it and headed right for the preheated grill, which was cranked up as hot as it could go. I flipped the dough off the baking pan directly onto the grill, oil side down, closed the grill cover and immediate lowered the heat to medium. I waited a minute-and-a-half, and I took a long cake spatula and slid it under the grilling dough, making sure it wasn’t stuck. I then picked up and turned the dough around 180 degrees and put it back on the grill (my grill has a sweet spot at one end of the grates). After another minute or so, I removed the dough back onto the baking pan and brought it back to the kitchen where I placed all my topping on the grilled side of the dough. Right before putting the assembled pizza back on the grill, I sprayed the grates with some Pam, and then I slid the pizza on the grill. I closed the cover, made sure my heat was on medium, and waited another three minutes, or until the cheese was thoroughly melted. Just to be sure my crust wasn’t burning I used the cake spatula to peek under the dough. When it was done, I slid it back on my baking pan, brought it over to the cutting board, and sliced it up.

My Sicilian in-laws were impressed, my daughter seemed be the one eating the most of it, and she’s been FaceBooking and texting me all week to write a post about it. Well, there you go, Julia. And, yes, I have dough thawing in the refrigerator right now for pizza tomorrow night.

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