Saturday, June 5, 2010

Grilled Pizza

Ok it you have been following for a while I have made pizza on the grill a few times but I have to mention that I often say that I can work a recipe to death.  A little tweak here a little alteration there and I just keep going until I am happy.   I think that I have about 5 recipes that are done now if you want to see some of them look here or here or this one.  There may be a couple of others that I am happy with but most are open to improvement...  This Memorial day weekend I pretty much made all of the hot food food on the grill (I know real original) we all made our own pizzas for lunch on the holiday.  This was a little different than my other grilled pizzas partly because we each made our own and partly because we mad them on whole wheat crusts!  Not completely on purpose I was following one of my regular bread recipes and ran out of white flour...

What do you do?  grab the whole wheat flour that you got for another recipe and go... 

The Crust:
not too hard this is a basic bread dough recipe
1 1/2 cups warm water
1/4 cup Sugar
2 tsp dry Active Yeast
1 TBS Butter melted
1 tsp Salt
2 cups White Flour
1 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour

Take the warm water (105 - 115 degrees) and add 1/4 cup sugar then the two teaspoons of yeast.  Let it activate (get all foamy and funny looking) about 5-6 minutes.  To that add the butter and salt then the flour one cup at a time, stirring as you go.  You have to figure out how much of that last 1/2 cup will need go in, you want the dough to be firm but not dry.  Once you have this ready cover it in plastic wrap and put your dough in a warm place for an hour or so to rise.

This is the first time that I have used whole wheat flour in regular bread dough I found that the end result was a  little softer... is that normal?  After it rose I pressed it down then put it in the fridge until lunch time.  When lunch time came around I floured a table top and started to roll them out, well I rolled one Miss Lu rolled the rest and Mr Man gave one a try.  After they were rolled out I sprayed them with spray shortening and put them on the grill two at a time (low heat or if using a charcoal push coals to the side so you get indirect heat).  After 3 or four minutes on each side bring them into the house to top. 

I set up toppings on the same table:
Marinara sauce (from the store, yeah I am lazy)
Mozzarella cheese
Pepperoni
a clean out the refrigerator assortment of cut vegetables.

Miss Lu made three of them... hers just sauce and cheese, Kris' Sauce Pepperoni and cheese Mr. Man Sauce cheese and five pepperoni "I am four and can count!"  Me just a whole mess of junk.  Once appropriately topped put back onto the grill two at a time and cook for another five minutes maybe.

So how was it you ask... really good this time, a little big for the kiddos but they asked me to save the leftovers, I don't think I have ever heard them say that before.

8 comments:

  1. Grilled pizza looks and sounds fantastic. It must taste better than baked.

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  2. First of all, Bryan, I prefer whole wheat pizza. It has a nuttier flavor, I think. And then, I love the idea of everyone making their own. Pizza is the one thing nobody can agree on!
    Love the idea of grilling pizza anyway; must give it a smokey flavor.

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  3. Oh the smokey flavor and the crispy texture is so good off the grill! I think I liked the whole wheat better too it really rounded it out well.

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  4. I cannot wait to try this! We make homemade pizza nearly every Friday night. I love having our kids help us to make it too and they love the crust and all the toppings! We make our own crust using Kamut Khorasan Wheat which is an awesome ancient whole grain full of nutrients! I bet this is amazing off the grill :)

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  5. Mmm, grilled pizza is just so good! I can't get enough either, and so of course you'd find ways to tweak and improve the recipe you use. The counting of pepperoni is really cute, good for Mr. Man on working on his counting skills.

    http://thefunkykitchen.com

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  6. HI Bryan, these look great! I throw wholemeal flour in all my recipes these days, I agree it does make the dough a little softer and gives it a fuller flavour.
    I gotta say we all make out own pizza too. My fave is bacon, shrimp, with a white sauce then finished with fresh chilli and cilantro- divine!!

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  7. I have been wanting to do this for awhile, but haven't had the guts. July 4th weekend seems like a good time to take the plunge.

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  8. The girls love making their own pizza! We tried grilling pizza last summer to wonderful results! Yours looks great.

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