Fun With Carbs

Those mushrooms better STAY ON THEIR OWN SIDE.

Since we’ve discovered the crispy, melty deliciousness that is pizza on the grill, we’ve never looked back. Trouble is, it’s become a full-blown project in our house, starting with homemade dough and ending with attempts at precise heating instructions. But it’s worth it.

The foundation of good pizza is always good crust, which starts with good dough. And let me just tell you, dough and I aren’t very good friends lately. Last week I completely spaced out while making a gift loaf of French bread, forgot to add yeast to the bread pan. I opened the bread maker to find a completely unleavened pile of crap waiting for me. Yesterday I improvised on a pizza dough recipe (since we found our previous mainstay too bready and heavy) and the culprit was either too much water or too much yeast, because the dough literally POURED out of the bread pan. Round 2 was more successful but still a little too moist.

My dough recipe roughly translated below:

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp sugar (I use white, granulated)
1 tbsp cornmeal
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp garlic powder

Blank canvas for yummy toppings

Once the dough had risen, Rob kneaded it and rolled it out onto an oiled cookie sheet. Our pizza stone, dusted with cornmeal, was heating up on the grill, ready to receive the dough.

On my side of the pizza: pretty much any gourmet ingredient I had in the fridge. (It’s my house and I can be a pizza snob if I want to.) Homemade alfredo sauce, fresh mozzarella, roasted garlic, sun-dried tomato, feta, ricotta and parmesan, finished off with sprinklings of basil and ground pepper and a touch of olive oil. Rob kept it simple with pizza sauce, fresh mozz and sliced mushrooms, and I monitored the process to make sure no fungus touched my side of the crust.

Here’s  a quick rundown of the grill process:

• Heat grill up to 400 degrees.

• Using a cookie sheet coated with olive oil and corn meal, place pizza on top shelf for approximately 6 minutes.

• Then, turn down the heat and move pizza from the cookie sheet down to the pizza stone for approximately 3-4 minutes, or until the cheese starts to brown slightly.

• Be sure to rotate pizza during the grilling process for best and most consistent results.

Other grilled-pizza fanatics like to put the dough right on the flame, but we haven’t yet figured out how to do that without completely incinerating the bottom. Our method gets the dough appropriately crispy without blackening it. The pizza stone is key there.

The pizza cutter slid through the crust with a satisfying crunch, but the slices were still chewy and doughy where it counted. All of my cheeses melted together into creamy oblivion.

I know not everyone will have the time or patience to make fresh dough, but the end result is pretty spectacular. We’ve found store-bought dough difficult to work with, especially when it’s cold and unyielding. If you use it, make sure it’s fully defrosted, preferably at room temperature, when you start to roll it out.

And it just so happens I have a couple of slices left over for breakfast…