Grilled Pizza… on Homemade Dough

This grill thing is great… less cooking I have to do, less pots and pans I have to clean… But… I finally started getting tired of eating so much meat. Nick would eat a steak every day of his life if he could. I shouldn’t complain, since he buys me expensive filets just so he can grill and have his grisly juicy rib eyes. But even filets get old.

So I got to thinking about what else I could make on the grill. I figured grilled veggies would be met with slight disdain, so I decided to meet in the middle… grilled pizzas!

To make pizza, you need dough. Normally I use Boboli crusts or my favorite, Pillsbury pizza dough in a can. I’ve never made my own pizza dough because frankly, kneading dough by hand for 15 minutes doesn’t sound all that entertaining. But now that I have this beauty…!!

She’s so pretty.

Homemade Wheat Pizza Dough

• 1 1/2 cups warm water, 105-115 degrees
• 1 packet dry active yeast
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

In the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve yeast in warm water.

Add olive oil, salt and 2 1/2 cups flour (either flour is fine).

With the dough hook attachment, mix on speed 2 for 2 minutes. Continuing on speed 2, slowly add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time until it’s all incorporated. The dough will form a ball around the hook and come away from the sides of the bowl. (If dough is too sticky, add additional flour). Once this has happened (about 2 min), mix on speed 2 an additional 3 minutes, until dough is soft and elastic.

Flour your hands, pull the dough out of the bowl, and form into a ball. Coat the ball in olive oil, set it in a bowl, and cover with a towel.

Let the dough rise for 1 hour.

Ta-da! Magic! The dough will make 4 small pizzas, or 2 large pizzas. I cut it in half and froze half for another day.

Now onto the pizzas! I worked at a pizza restaurant for over a year, and for over a year I ate pizza almost every day. I had quite a few favorite crazy topping combos. One of them was ham, pineapple and banana peppers. Nick and I always think alike (food-wise anyways) and recently he ordered a takeout Hawaiian with jalapenos, thinking he was so smart inventing this combination. Little did he know, I’ve been eating it forever! I’m an equal opportunity hot pepper eater. Banana or jalapeno, I like them both. But either way, we needed to create our favorite combo.

I’m not entirely sure what the difference between Canadian bacon and ham is, but they taste the same to me, and I just couldn’t resist buying these cute pepperoni shaped pieces. I used plain tomato sauce, but kicked it up with some oregano, red pepper flakes and garlic salt.

Kicked Up Hawaiian Grilled Pizzas

• 1/2 batch homemade pizza dough (recipe above)
• olive oil
• pizza sauce
• ham or Canadian bacon pieces
• pineapple tidbits
• pickled jalapeno or banana peppers
• mozzarella cheese

Stretch the doughs out on a piece of parchment paper or floured surface. They don’t need to be perfectly shaped, but should be about 1/8″ thick.

Heat the grill to medium high heat. Coat both sides of the crusts liberally with olive oil. Carefully place the crusts on the grill and grill a few minutes until the bottom is crispy and nicely grill marked. Flip the crusts over, reduce heat to low, and cover the crusts with toppings.

It helps to have someone help you, so you can get the toppings on quickly and have time to heat them thoroughly before the crusts are done.

Once you’ve got the toppings on, close the cover and continue grilling until the crusts are crispy and cheese is melted. Remove and enjoy!

The grilled crust was awesome! This was definitely a learning process, but we’ll be much more efficient next time. One of our crusts had thin spots and ripped a little, we didn’t have enough cheese, I was frazzled trying to get the toppings on quickly…

The other 1/2 batch of dough is waiting patiently in the freezer for its turn on the grill! We’ll definitely be making these again!