pizza on the mind

Okay, so by now everyone has heard the news. The first 3 months were very hard...much harder then I anticipated. There was a lot of nausea, a lot of gaging, and tons of tiredness. Ironically, food has become an after thought for me. Suddenly, the thought of having a juicy steak or a grilled filet of salmon sounds very unappealing. One of the benefits of pregnancy though is my new love of pizza. Yes, I was one that never really enjoyed pizza that much...but now, it's all I want to eat.
So, with the cold weather approaching, we decided to have one last bbq...and what better to grill then pizza!

We got the grill smoking hot, and then placed the rolled dough on the hot grates.

After a generous lather of fresh tomato sauce, we topped our pizza with some of our favorite toppings. Since the pizza cooks at a fast rate, we precooked most of our toppings -- onions, mushrooms, shrimps, peppers, etc. Some toppings we left on raw, such as fresh tomatoes, basil, and olives.

Once the toppings heated through, we topped the pizza with either parmesan or fontina cheese.

This pizza was delicious. Smokey from the grill, crispy, thin, and salty from the cheese...it was just wonderful. I highly recommend making pizza on the grill, but I must warn you that you can't use a heavy hand for the toppings since it is such a light pizza. Less is more!
The dough was a perfect combo of chewy and crisp. It was more like a thin crust pizza since that is what we prefer.

Pizza Dough Recipe

4 1/2 cups Flour
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups water, ice cold
Semolina flour or cornmeal for dusting

Stir together the flour, salt, and instant yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer. By hand stir in the oil and the cold water until the flour is all absorbed. Add the herbs. Switch to the dough hook and mix on medium speed for 5 to 7 minutes, or as long as it takes to create a smooth, sticky dough. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom of the bowl. Add a touch of water or flour to reach the desired effect. The finished dough will be springy, elastic, and sticky, not just tacky.

Transfer the dough to a floured countertop. Cut the dough into 6 equal pieces and mold each into a ball. Rub each ball with olive oil and slip into plastic sandwich bags. Refrigerator overnight.

When you are ready to make pizza (anytime in the next few days), remove the desired number of dough balls from the refrigerator at least 1 hour before making the pizza. Keep them covered so they don't dry out.

Uncover or unwrap the dough balls and dust them with flour. Working one at a time, gently press a dough round into a disk wide enough that you can bring it up onto your knuckles to thin out - you should be able to pull each round out to 12-inches or so. If the dough is being fussy and keeps springing back, let it rest for another 15-20 minutes.

Bake until the crust is crisp and nicely colored.

Makes six 6-ounce pizza crusts.