Fire Grilled Pizza

What started out as a whim has become our go-to method for making homemade pizza. Utilizing our gas grill with a rotisserie burner, a brick oven doesn't hold a candle to our fire grilled pizza. (Full disclosure, we've migrated to a pellet grill which imparts a wonderful smoky flavor into the fire-grilled pizza!) While you can use a traditional sauce and shredded cheese on a grilled pizza, we like to take advantage of the grill to roast our toppings, creating a unique, artisan pie. 

1. Start with your favorite pizza dough - we stock up on Trader Joe's loaves of pizza dough because they're fresh, inexpensive and freeze beautifully. Let the dough sit out and rise. Then knead and toss into the proper pizza shape. Flour the dough liberally so it doesn't stick to the grill. Homemade dough works well too (see recipe for Chicago Style Pizza) or see below for a fantastic bread machine pizza dough recipe.
2. Prepare your sauce. We use a simple sauce made from blended canned tomatoes and seasoned with basil, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper. Leave some tomato chunks when blending for a truly rustic sauce.
3. Take a ball of fresh mozzarella cheese and cut it into cubes.
4. Select your toppings based upon the season, and take advantage of the heated grill! Toss some sliced onions and green peppers in olive oil and grill them! Do the same with fresh sliced mushrooms.
5. The key to grilled pizza is to build each pizza on the grill. With the grill heated to high (we turn on the rotisserie burner for added fire), place the prepared dough directly on the grate. The dough will start to bake immediately.
6. After the dough has started to bake, brush on the tomato sauce and add the cubed cheese. Add the toppings last (if you're grilling your vegetables at the same time, you can move them from the grill directly to the pizza).
7. Watch the pizza - the dough will cook quickly (in about five minutes). Then remove the pizza from the grill with a peel, top with grated parmesan or romano cheese and serve.

Bread Machine Pizza Dough

The beauty of this recipe is that you can add ingredients, start your bread machine and forget. The bread machine even proofs the dough.

Ingredients:

1 C water
1 Tbls olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
3 C bread flour
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp fast acting dry yeast (for bread machine works best)
2 tsp dried herbs ( basil, rosemary, oregano, parsley, etc.) (optional)

1 tsp semolina ( or yellow cornmeal) (optional)

Add ingredients in order listed into bread machine. Select "dough" setting; start and walk away. When machine is done, punch down dough and allow to rise again. Or, removed dough from bread maker, coat with a bit of olive oil, cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel and allow to rise a second time. Complete your pizza as described above.