GRILLING PIZZA AND FLAVORED FLATBREADS
What's good in the kitchen can be made great on the grill.
In Steven Raichlen's book How to Grill, I read about making pizza on the grill from scratch (not heating up a premade crust or frozen pizza). So... Today's lesson is pizza and flavored flat breads... |
Mise-en-plase (Getting Everything in its Place)
1. Toppings need to be precooked. Grilled pizza cooks fast and can burn quickly, so raw toppings won't have the time to cook through. Instead, toppings will cook only long enough to warm and blend flavors. Sometimes I will grill onions, peppers, meat, or other toppings first on the high heat, then chop them up while the coals are cooling enough to start cooking the dough. To be safe, have your chosen toppings ready to put on the pizza before the crust hits the grill.
2. One half to one hour before grilling, pull the cheese out of the refrigerator to warm it up. You want the cheese at room temp so it will melt faster. 3. Grilled pizza is not overly cheesy or heavy with toppings. Too many toppings make the crust moist and are a mess to eat. It took me a few tries to realize this. |
Food to Fire- Get Cookin'
1. Always keep the grill scraped clean and oiled for less sticking and better grill marks. I use a two zone fire. One side is medium hot (with more coals, below left) and the other side is a cooler safety zone with no or only a few coals (below right). Bread can go from grilled to burnt quickly, so stay at the grill when making pizza.
3. Cook 2-4 minutes until the dough blisters and you can slide it around with your spatula. (A large spatula helps turn the pizza without ripping the dough. When I oversize the crust or make it too thin, I use two spatulas.)
4. Check for sufficient brownness. It should be ready in less than 5 minutes.
6. Put on the toppings quickly. You have 1 to 3 minutes to add all the toppings while the crust cooks and before it burns. Cheese goes on first so it will get hotter and melt faster.
8. As soon as you can slide the crust, move it to the cool side of the grill and close the lid to help heat up the toppings and finish cooking the crust. Even on the cool side, the pizza is near enough to the hot coals that it can still burn, so after a couple of minutes I turn it. It cooks for a total of about five minutes, or until you think it looks done.
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2. Place well-oiled dough over medium hot coals. Oil helps keep the dough from sticking and helps to make it crispy without burning.
4. Move crust to the cool side of the grill. This will keep it warming without burning.
5. If you like it, flip crust back to the hot side of the grill to brown the other side.
7. Add the rest of the toppings quickly. If the crust is browning too fast or smelling burnt you should move it to the safe zone and finish topping the pizza.
9. When it looks good and hot remove from grill and enjoy.
I have read about people putting half the crust over the hot side and the other half over the cool side, then continually turning the pizza until it's done. They say it gets a crispier crust. Try it if you want to and see what happens. I like my way. |
Combination Suggestions for the Student of Pizza Art (and Dough)
Pizza is an art form- let the crust be your canvas. Here are some of my tasty pizza combinations:
The Basic Fry 2 to 3 strips of bacon (and/or sausage) and break up, saute 1/2 an onion, use 1/4 cup of chopped banana peppers. Your choice of some cheeses are cheddar, jalapeno cheddar, or pepper jack. The Italian(ish) Saute or roast onion, 4 or more cloves of garlic, and some red peppers. Use mozzarella cheese as the base, add the toppings, then lightly sprinkle Parmesan over the top. (If you can find it use Hook's pesto cheese instead or add basil to the toppings.) Herb/ Garden Pizzas For my first grilled pizza, I cut and seeded 4 roma tomatoes, added 2 chopped green onions and 2 cloves of garlic, soaked it all in 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar for 15 minutes, then drained it. These toppings went with mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Theresa says it was the best pizza I have ever done. Other options include mozzarella with pesto. (I thought pesto was made only with basil until I read "pesto" is any chopped herb mixed with a little oil, cheese and nuts... Students, another area of taste experiments.) Try parsley. Or maybe sage, rosemary, and thyme. (Anybody who knows about good herb combinations can help me out here.) Meat Pizzas Option 1: On a hot fire grill peppers and sliced onions then grill steak fajita meat. Chop and cover veggies and meat to keep warm. Your fire should still be hot enough to cook the pizza. Add cilantro and cheese of choice with grilled toppings. Since the meat is still hot you can put cheese under and over it and remember to scrape clean and oil the grill before you put the dough on. Option 2: Mix 3 crushed cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce with 1/2 lb of hamburger. Make into patties and cook to medium well, then break up to use on a pizza. (I like doing the burgers because they seem less salty to me and if I don't use them on the pizza I can use them on a bun.) Use with cheddar, mozzarella, or pesto cheese. Put basil on top. Breakfast Pizza Scramble 2 to 4 eggs and let cool. Cook meat of choice (ham, bacon, sausage, or steak). Finely chop 2 green onions. Use cheese of choice (I like sharp cheddar). Put everything on the dough, cook and enjoy. Tired of typing... have fun with it and get creative. |
Pizza Dough
Dough can make or break your pizza. You want dough that is thin enough to cook through and be crisp, but thick enough to not go through your grill grates. When I started grilling pizza, I used ready made Pillsbury bread dough. It worked, but I had to be careful because it was so thin that sometimes it was hard to move the crust and other times it fell through the grill to become offerings to the fire.
There is a homemade dough recipe in Steven Raichlen's How to Grill, but most times I am too lazy to make my own. Then I use the simple whole wheat dough that Theresa makes that can sit in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. She usually has some made so it's there whenever we're ready to use it, or she can make it in about 10 minutes flat if I ask her nicely. This dough technique and recipe comes from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Theresa points out that they have now also published Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day, which would probably work better for pizza, but she hasn't been able to check it out yet. This has reminded her to get it from the library. Ah... interested editors... nice... |
She also wants me to tell you about a cooking show we watched about making homemade pizzas. The chef pointed out that dough is the most important ingredient in a pizza. He felt that the toppings were just there to showcase the dough. This is one of the reasons you'll notice we don't use pizza sauce or tons of cheese- it tends to overwhelm the taste of the fresh bread dough.
Whatever dough you use, a rectangular shape crust works best on the grill. It fits over the fire better and is easier to move with one spatula.
Whatever dough you use, a rectangular shape crust works best on the grill. It fits over the fire better and is easier to move with one spatula.
Flavored Flatbreads
Over the weekend I had a whole batch of Theresa's bread to use and was only going to make two pizzas. Hmm... what to do with the rest of the dough? Make flat breads, or is it pita breads? Whatever, some of it is going to be good. (Experiment, experiment, experiment...)
My best ideas so far: Chop bannana peppers and mix with the dough before grilling. Grate an onion and mix with the dough before grilling. (Theresa comments that this was suprisingly flavorful. I also had bacon mixed with the onion, but decided it was good without the bacon.) Mix brown sugar with the dough to make a dessert bread. I grilled all of these without additional toppings and snacked on them. The dessert bread was particularly good and I am going to experiment with other sweeteners and possibly add chocolate chips. Wish me luck. |
- Bear