How I Grilled a Pizza.

I wish you could have been here Sunday night. I decided to try grilling pizza. I've been thinking about it for a while, but honestly, I was a little daunted by the idea of throwing uncooked dough onto the grill. I was scared the dang thing would ooze through the grate and onto the coals. So I finally got up my nerve and whipped up some whole wheat crust using a combination of several recipes. I added more olive oil to the dough, because somewhere I read that an oil rich dough does better on the coals.

Well, it seemed obvious to me that grilled veggies were the appropriate toppings, so I sliced up an eggplant and sweated it with salt for 1/2 hour, halved a red pepper and a Vidalia onion. I also had some portabello mushrooms.. I diced up some Roma tomatoes and garlic and let those sit at room temperature for about an hour. I infused about 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil with chopped garlic, dried oregano, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper. All the veggies except the tomatoes went on the grill. #2 had to get in on the action:


Here's a closeup of the veggies:


It's important when grilling pizza to have everything ready on hand. After I grilled the veggies I cut them up and put them into small bowls. I had 4 pizza doughs separated by plastic wrap. There's the olive oil on the right and fresh grated mozzarella on the left. A word of advice, don't let your cheese and dough get too warm. They become hard to handle. The first dough, the coolest, held its shape the best. The other 3 got progressively more difficult to pick up and stretched out a little. The cheese, well, it was clumping together and hard to sprinkle over the pizza.


You get the grill pretty hot and spread the olive oil on one side of the dough, put that side of the dough onto the grill and watch it bubble up. This takes about 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the thickness of the dough. Isn't that gorgeous? I was so excited when the dough puffed up instead of oozing down.


Then you flip the dough, spread that side with oil and put on your toppings. I started with the cheese then the tomatoes, then a little of everything else. I think the main thing is not to put on too much stuff. The pizzas weren't too difficult to get off the grill because I kept them pretty small. I had a couple of small pizza pans that I turned upside down and slid the pizzas onto them as they were done. This was hands down the BEST pizza I've ever eaten. Here's the finished product.


And that is how I grilled a pizza.

PS: I AM knitting, but the pizza pictures were more interesting than my knitted stuff. I'll get back on topic soon, I promise.