California-style Grilled Pizza
Home-made pizza is a week-end tradition at our house. During the summer, we sometimes use this grilled pizza recipe for a change. The individual doughs are rolled out and taken to the grill where all the other ingredients are waiting for each person to assemble their own pizza according to their preference. It is easy to make and surprisingly good. If you’ve never grilled pizza, you must give this a try!
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 packages dry yeast
1 Tablespoon honey
3 Tablespoons olive oil
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Toppings of your choice
For the dough, combine the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in a bowl and mix.
Add 3 cups of all purpose flour, and the salt and mix. If possible, use a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook for this. While mixing, add an additional cup or so of flour until it makes a soft dough. Dough will gather up into a ball, and at that point, you will need to turn it out onto a floured surface, and knead it a time or two to gather into a nice ball. Place ball in greased bowl, and turn so the top is also greased. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 30-40 minutes.
When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it a time or two. Dough should be smooth and elastic. Cut dough into six equal pieces. Roll each dough piece into a round. Each will make an individual size pizza.
You can place the pizza doughs on a cookie sheet with wax paper between the layers.
We like to take the pizza dough and a variety of ingredients outside to the grill and let everyone “design” their own personal pizza just the way they want. When the grill is hot, place one or two crusts at a time (whatever will fit and whatever you can handle at one time) on the grill and cook the first side for about one minute or so. Watch carefully because they’ll burn quickly.
When the first side is done, it should be browned on the underneath side and the top should be slightly dry and bubbly.
Remove crusts the from grill and turn browned side up. Place the desired toppings on the cooked (browned) side so that the uncooked side will be down when you put them back on the grill. Keep in mind that these cook very quickly, so you don’t want to put a large amount of toppings on the pizzas. Go light on the cheese especially because it won’t have time to melt if it’s too heavy.
Once you have the toppings just the way you like them, return to the grill and cook until cheese is melted and bottom is browned.
We all like something different on our pizzas, so this is a great meal to take outside and serve right out in the backyard while some are assembling and some are cooking their pizzas.We typically opt for lighter, fresher ingredients for these pizzas rather than the heavier meat topped pizzas. Suggested toppings that we have tried include, pesto or marinara for the base layer, then mozzarella, parmesan, feta, or goat cheese, fresh basil leaves, fresh baby spinach leaves, sundried tomatoes or fresh thinly sliced tomatoes, olives, sauteed onions and peppers or whatever you can come up with. It’s a lot of fun seeing all the different creations. This is a great recipe that’s a lot of fun too. Everyone is able to be involved in this meal!