Flippin’ Grilled Pizzas

I love wood-fire pizza. I love grilled pizza. I love grilling. How could this go wrong?

I never was that happy making grilled pizza at home. The closest I could get to making something I liked was with premade cornmeal crust (Vicolo, www.vicolopizza.com). Vicolo is way cool in my book. They used to have restaurant in Palo Alto which served amazing slices. But Kailani likes thin crust pizza, and I don’t think Diane liked the corn meal crust at all. I would sometimes buy some Boboli crusts, which works in a pinch, but really is not as good. Its like the Kraft of pizza crust. Which is not to say I don’t sometimes eat Kraft mac & cheese. Or that I have never made a Kraft mac & cheese pizza. But I digress.

Sometimes I would try my hand with fresh pizza dough, a la Trader Joe. They make a few different types, but my favorite is the plain dough. The big problem, even with a pizza peel is that I had a hard time getting my fully loaded pizza onto the grill. It would wind up deformed, I would lose toppings, it would stick to the peel. Worse still, the top of the crust never got as cooked as I would like. And thin crust? Forget about it.

I’ve been cooking a lot with my Big Green Egg, which is basically like a ceramic lined wood fired oven. I was playing with my pizza stone and even a granite piastra (an Italian grilling stone). But I still wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I knew there had to be a better way.

The big improvement for me came after reading Pizza on the Grill by Elizabeth Karmel and Bob Blumer. I haven’t actually  made any of the recipes (which look very tasty), but I picked up a technique that has revolutionized my grilled pizza making talents. I put away my pizza stone and piastra and put my trust in my cast iron grate.

The technique that Karmel and Blumer put forward is to roll/stretch out your dough, and cook it unadorned on your hot grill until one side is cooked. Maybe 5 minutes. It gets a little browned plus grill marks. Pull it off, flip it over and THEN put all your toppings on! Brilliant! You get more flavor, you get more stability, and you can go for thin crust. My pizzas wind up looking very organic, as I stretch my dough out by hand. But I think the organic look is very cool, plus some bits get extra crunchy. Bonus! The flip method totally rocks!

So now I am getting pretty consistent results with my crust. Kailani and I love to play around with the toppings. She is a pesto lover and is not much into tomato based pizza sauces. One pizza last night had pesto, a three cheese mix (mozzarella, cheddar, swiss), sauteed portobello mushrooms, corn, almond slivers, red onion, and a finishing topping of micro greens (broccoli, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale, mustard, tatsoi, amaranth, and celery – Trader Joe’s mix). Ok, and truth be told, there may have been a little bacon.

Grilled pesto pizza made by the flip method.

Diane is not a big pesto fan, so I made a second grilled pizza. Kind of a riff off of one of her favorite pizzeria pizzas, the “Jane Byrne” pizza from Pizz’a Chicago. Basically its a bacon and dried apricot pizza. My changes were to add some slivered almonds and finish with a topping of fresh spinach. If you think apricot and bacon is odd, it really isn’t too different from the sweet and salty ham and pineapple. If you think the crust looks a little different, it was whole wheat. Not as easy to work with. Diane got the health crust to balance the bacon.

Grilled "Jane Byrne" pizza made with the flip method.

So, where to from here? I’ve got to take this crusty confidence and go the the next step. Its time to make my own crust from scratch. But for now, that will have to be another story.

Last night’s beverage of choice was Anchor Bock. Dark brown. Maybe a little molasses on the nose.  Rich and strong.  Absolutely delicious. Bock marks the arrival of spring. Regardless of what the groundhog reports, it feels like spring has arrived.

Cheers! Jerry