Monday, February 21, 2011

Charcoal Grilled Pizza!


© Nick Young 2011
Grilling pizzas outside on a warm day is a fun group activity. Encourage your guests to get creative with their choices of toppings and sauces!

Dough
1/2 lb bread flour
1/2 lb all purpose flour
1 tps salt
1 tbs honey or sugar
10 ozs warm water
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
Makes about three small pizzas.

The grill should be prepared with the charcoal around 30-40 minutes before you are ready to cook. The coals should be glowing. I advise gathering the coals to one side in order to give you control over the amount of heat the pizza gets by moving from one side to the other as needed.

Add the yeast, honey (or sugar) and olive oil to the water. Add the salt to the flour and make a well in the center, when the yeast begins to bubble add to the flour. Work the flour and water together from the center outwards. Once well mixed, turn out on a clean floured surface and knead throughly. Shape the dough into a ball and place in a oiled bowl, cover and allow to rise.

Once the dough has risen, turn out on to a floured surface and knead briefly to knock the air out. Split into three roughly equal pieces. Roll out a piece the dough, sprinkle a little cornmeal on a cutting board and lay the rolled out on top. The cornmeal prevents the dough from sticking to the cutting board/pizza paddle. Add your sauce, cheese and toppings and slide gently on to the grill and place the lid back on the grill!

Depending on the temperature of the coals, the pizza should only take about 10-15 minutes.

You can, of course, put whatever you like on a pizza, the different combinations are limited only by your imagination!

I am not going to add specific pizza ingredients to this "recipe" as, after the dough, there are just three basic tenants to makings pizza,

  • Base sauce
  • Cheese
  • Toppings

As I said above, the different combinations are limited only by your imagination!

Some of the pizzas we made tonight were, a honey, apple and gorgonzola; an alfredo, tomato, and double cheese; and a tomato, asparagus pizza.

Enjoy!


Video to follow!



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