Thursday, July 17, 2008

Grilled Pizza

I've been wanting to try grilled pizza for awhile. I've seen recipes and videos for doing it, and it doesn't seem to be extremely difficult, except you just have to watch things a little closer as you can burn things faster on the grill. So on Sunday, Kirsten took the girls to church and I stayed home with the boys, since Lando was all spotted with hives, which have since cleared up. Sitting at home, my mind wandered in the direction of food, specifically pizza, and I decided to finally try grilled pizza.

I enjoy making pizza, and if you recall just a short time ago, I posted about making Dutch Oven pizza, and how it wouldn't work to make the pizza on the camp chef stove/grill. Well, it actually works pretty nicely on the grill. As usual, we start with Jay's Signature Pizza Crust for the dough, but instead of splitting the dough in two, I split it into four. Normally we make two 12 inch pizzas, but I rolled the crust out thinner and made four 8 to 10 inch pizzas. One of the great things about making more pizzas is you can have a bigger variety in toppings.

As the dough was raising, I defrosted some chicken and marinated it with some fake buttermilk (milk with about a teaspoon of vinegar) and some chili powder. Marinating chicken in buttermilk gives it a really nice texture, even if you only have a half hour or so to marinate it. I grilled the chicken when the dough was just about ready, plus we had some cooked sausage leftover with the Tamarancho Chicken I made at a family party the night before (I'll post that recipe later).

To cook the pizzas, place the rolled out dough on the hot grill until one side is nicely browned. After cooking one side, flip the crusts over and add the toppings to the browned side. About 5 or 6 minutes per side is about right, depending on how hot you have it. When the other side is browned and the cheese is melted, it's done. You don't want flames directly on the dough, so make sure your gas grill has a flame guard or if you're using charcoal there shouldn't be any flames.

Two of the pizzas on the grill.

Here are the four cooked pizzas, clockwise from the bottom left: barbecue chicken, ham, italian sausage, and alfredo chicken.

And below is T going after a piece of pizza. He'd have stuffed it in his mouth if we let him.

9 comments:

Allyson said...

Rob, would you come to my house and cook pizza? You always have the best recipes!
Allyson

Cheryl said...

I was just talking to Dave about making grilled pizzas. Maybe I'll have to give it a try.

Dave said...

I'll definitely have to give this a try. Did you have any problems with the dough sticking to the grill? Do you need to grease the rack or anything?

Mary Anne said...

You never cease to amaze me Rob. I just get so intimidated by your recipes sometimes...they're pretty amazing.

robmba said...

I didn't grease the rack, but it probably wouldn't hurt to. I have a camp chef stove and the grill box that goes on it has a cast iron grilling surface, so like a dutch oven, it has a mostly nonstick surface to start with.

Pam said...

That looks so good. I'm going to try it for sure.

Amy said...

That looks soooo good, especially because I'm doing another cleanse and could use some carbs about now! I love the new layout you are such a pro blogger!

Shelley Goodman said...

I love different kinds of pizza. I would for sure love the alfredo one, that is what I always get at Olive Garden:)

onnuh said...

My mom stumbled to your blog from mine and saw this pizza post. She tried making grilled pizza last night and loved it!