Grilled Pizza

You may recall a while back I reviewed Alton Brown's book, Gear For Your Kitchen. There was a great little recipe in there for grilled pizza. Often when I read food books I will skim over the recipes, but never pay them much attention. That's was the case with Ruth Reichel's book (which it appears I never finished reviewing), but not so with AB. I made this one on an electric skillet and it was good.

Then my wife and I watched America's Test Kitchen make their version. It was pretty similar. I mean, how many ways can you drape a dough on a grill and call it pizza? They emphasized that the dough has to be rather thick and chewy to stay afloat on the grate, and that you have to be careful not to overload the pizza with too many toppings, especially wet ones like tomatoes, since the cooking time is so short.

We had some friends over the other day and cooked grilled pizzas for them. This time we got to use the real deal, our new 45,000 BTU grill. It's every boy's dream to cook with real live fire.

The toppings included mozzarella cheese, finely diced tomatoes, garden fresh spinach, and mushrooms. We also made a cheese and pepporoni pizza just for the kids (following Michael Chu's recommendation of microwaving the pepperoni to remove excess grease.

Preparation is simple enough. Roll out the dough. Wait, you need the dough recipe? OK, here's your ingredients. 1 pound flour, 1 package yeast, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar. Mix. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 cup hot water. Knead well, rise for an hour and a half.

Now you've got your dough rolled out into oblong shapes (let's face it, who can make round pizzas?). Coat one side with oil (I go cheap and just use canola). Lay oil side down on the grill. Paste on another coat of oil on the top side. Cook until it gets a nice color. Flip. Now add a layer of garlic and olive oil, and then any toppings you want. Chris Kimball says to put the cheese down first, but I found cheese last works better. Because the dough is already cooked and the toppings don't have much moisture, they tend to slide off. The cheese holds them in place nicely.

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