Sunday, March 14, 2010

Grilled pizza success!

As many years as I've been grilling and barbecuing, I had yet to try grilling a pizza. Well, that changed this weekend!

I made three - two barbecue, one cheese. The two barbecue pizzas when on the grill. One was a pulled pork pizza, the other was pulled smoked chicken and caramelized onion. Here's the pulled chicken ready to go on the grill:


And here it is after being pulled off the grill:


Let me tell you how amazingly simple this was. First the recipe:

Crust (I made three large pizzas, so this could be used for four medium, or even five medium thin-crust pizzas):

> 5 cups of flour (I used 2.5 white and 2.5 wheat and it was great!)
> .5 ounce active dry yeast
> 1/2 teaspoon salt (give or take)
> 2 cups warm water
> 1 heaping TBL of honey
> 2 TBL olive oil

1. Mix the honey and warm water.
2. Add yeast to water and let sit for about 10 minutes - until it gets all foamy.
3. Pour into a large bowl.
4. Add flour, salt and olive oil.
5. Knead for 6-8 minutes. I used my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook on medium until it got kind of stiff.
6. Let rest for 30 min - hour.
7. The dough is ready.

I divided the dough as evenly into three parts as I could. This was enough to get a hand-tossed-style thickness on each. You could certainly divide more to thinner or thicker based on taste.

Some folks use cornmeal on a greased pan - I can't stand that. So I put a little grease on a pizza stone, sprinkle just a little granulated garlic and a bit of salt. The stone is the key for this - a well-seasoned stone doesn't need any further oil to release whatever is cooked on it, but I find a little oil helps crisp up the crust a bit.

I used about four tablespoons worth of barbecue sauce on the pizza - in retrospect I would use more. I craved that tangy bite from my sauce and I just didn't get enough of it.

I had about approx. 2 cups of shredded chicken. Let me let you in on a secret here - without going to the trouble of smoking your own chicken, if you don't have leftovers - Walmart has some of the best chicken you can get your hands on at a great price! Their Rotisserie Backyard Grill Seasoned Chicken is amazing! At just under $5 it's a hell of a bargain too.

Caramelize one Vidalia onion (or more, to taste). I didn't measure cheese, just look at the pic above. I use enough cheese to cover but not overload. It's easy to use too much cheese.

Of course, this works great in an oven, but on the grill it was just phenomenal! I had the grill up to about 450. Then I put the stones on the grill. I had some problems with flare ups and that's something I'll have to address in the future. Also, the pizzas cooked much faster than I expected. They were well charred done after 10 minutes; I think they were probably perfectly done at about six or seven minutes.

If you've never tried pizza on the grill, I highly recommend giving it a go. If you don't have a pizza stone, or don't want to temp it breaking, you might want to try a pizza screen or just some heavy duty foil. I'd be interested in hearing about any of your attempts!

1 comment:

Mr. Bingley said...

sounds great!