Grillin' It! Step By Step

Last summer, I became the sort of unofficial president of the grilled pizza fan club on the recipe exchange at Allrecipes.com. I think I recommended the recipe and gave step by step instructions on a daily basis. The only thing I think I explained more was how to make home made yogurt (I'm thinking of demonstrating that in the near future).

For some reason, people seem to be a little intimidated by putting unbaked dough on the grill. They think it will stick or be difficult to work with. It's actually very easy and unbelievably delicious, not to mention fun. If you've never worked with yeast before, this is an easy recipe to start with. You can find the entire recipe here. It belongs to Allrecipes.com, so I can't post it here without their permission, but I can give you step by step instructions.

Start by proofing your yeast with 3/4 cup warm water. (You can use a thermometer, but I never do. The water should feel "just warm" to your finger. If it's hot it will kill the yeast, if it is cold it won't activate it.) The process takes about 10 minutes. You should see some swirling, bubbling or foaming on the top of the water.

When it's finished proofing, add your yeast/water mixture to your dry ingredients.

I start by mixing with a spatula, then I switch to using my hands. You want to continue kneading until you end up with a smooth, elastic ball of dough. If it's too sticky you can add a bit more flour.

At this point, I remove the dough from the bowl and drizzle a teaspoon or two of olive oil into the bottom of the bowl. Using my fingers, I spread the oil all over the inside of the bowl. Then I replace the dough and rotate it on the bottom of the bowl to coat it with oil.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or foil and place in a warm, draft free place to rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. It should double in size and look like this.

Gently punch down your dough. Now you have to decide how you want to shape it. You could roll it out onto a floured surface and make one large pizza, or you could do what we do and make free form individual sized pizzas. To do that, pinch off a large golf ball sized piece of dough and roll in into a ball. Flatten it between your palms and then gently stretch it into a larger circle. Place on your heated grill and cook for about 3 minutes. Flip and cook for another 2 or 3 minutes. You don't want them to change color very much or they will be overcooked. We bring the bowl(s) of dough right out to the grill and form them and throw them right on.

Sometimes they end up a little less than round. That's okay, that just makes them rustic! Remove crusts from grill. We transfer them to a cookie sheet until they're all done and ready to be topped.

Now comes the fun part! We set all the toppings in the middle of the table, give everyone a plate and a crust and let them top their own pizzas. Last night's toppings were cheese, standard red pizza sauce, alfredo sauce, ham, bacon, pepperoni, onion and hot peppers.

Each pizza then goes back onto the grill to melt the cheese. We usually close the lid and check them often.

After a few minutes, they're hot and melty and ready to eat. The crust is lightly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. Sometimes we make an extra batch of dough to form into pizzeria style soft breadsticks and brush them with melted butter and garlic (we didn't last night).

It may look time consuming, but, except for the rising time of the dough, it really isn't. We get six individual sized pizzas from each batch of dough.

Delicious!! If you've never tried it, I hope you do. It's so much fun!

I've added a survey to the top right hand side of this page. I'd appreciate it if you could take a minute to add your own answer. Thanks so much!