Sunday, September 2, 2007

Pizza!

I am trying to decide if I have become obsessed with grilling pizza, or if I will never do it again. This weekend, I made a crust I found on a pretty interesting blog about cooking etc. here: http://victoriasdays.blogspot.com. Then, I USED UP a bunch of tomatoes from my Angelic Organics box, a few leeks, and a lot of flour, yeast, olive oil, and garlic that I had in my pantry. So it is sort of a use it up recipe... Just be sure that before you start, you have all your toppings, sauce, etc. ready to go because these brown fast and you've got to top them really quickly! Next time, I'll used some pre-cooked sausage or bacon.

Here's what I did:

First I made dough, basically like this (recipe found here: http://www.self.com/health/recipes/2004/09/230129?printable=true&currentPage=all

Makes 4 individual crusts.

Grilled Pizza Crust
1 tbsp molasses
1 package (1/4 oz) active dry yeast
1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt
2 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/4 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Vegetable-oil cooking spray

In a large bowl, combine molasses and yeast with 1 1/3 cups lukewarm water. Stir. Set aside until bubbly, about 5 minutes. Add salt and oil and stir. In a separate bowl, mix flours together. Add yeast mixture to flours and stir with a wooden spoon until dough forms. Divide dough into 4 portions. (Freeze any unused dough.) Using hands, roll dough into balls, coat fully with cooking spray and set aside. Prepare a gas grill. Grill should be very hot. Position grilling rack 3 or 4 inches from heat source. Flour a baking sheet. With hands, flatten a ball of dough into an 8-inch circle on baking sheet. Using fingertips, gently lift dough, and set it on the grill. When dough puffs and underside stiffens (about 1 minute for gas or charcoal, several minutes for stovetop grill), flip crust with a spatula; move to the coolest part of the grill.


While the crust was initially browning, I grilled thick tomato slices and leeks, sprayed with olive oil and garlic. Topped the pizzas with Trader Joe's shredded four cheese mix, some with fresh mozz, some with goat cheese, most with fresh basil from the garden. Turned out pretty good!

(They were better when I was sure to roll the dough thinner, and I was more easily able to achieve this with a rolling pin than with my hands).

If you are thinking of giving grilled pizza a try, definitely do it! It's hard to mess up.