Note that’s “Fiery,” not “Fieri.”
The grilled naan last week was such a knockout that I was an easy sell on giving similarly fire-toasted pizzas a go. I tested the limits of Smitten Kitchen’s honey and white wine crust, piling four mini-pizzas high with twice the tomato sauce, plus roasted onions, red peppers, portabellas, and a heap of torn mozzarella.
Oh c’mon. Look at the golden mozzarella draped over that toasty onion. You can almost smell the tang of tomatoes hugging crispy honeyed crust. It was fabulous.
Just like the naan, I had no issues with hard-won dough tragically collapsing through malevolent grill grates, and neither will you. Crank that puppy up high, and I would actually recommend rolling the dough out quite a bit thinner than mine before you lay it on the heat – it should take the stress just fine. Pay attention to it; as soon as the bottom gets crispy, you snatch it away from the coals, flip, arrange your toppings on the already golden side, and then slap it back on the heat for just a minute or so more.
You can read about my first iteration of Deb’s recipe here, but there’s no way I’ll go back to meager oven-baked pies after experiencing the forbidden joy of grilled pizzabeasts. Let these mothers burn.
Honey and White Wine Pizza
from smittenkitchen.
makes: one huge thin-crust pizza or two fatty pizzabeasts (I doubled this recipe, and it could have fed 6 ravenous diners)
time: 20 minutes messing around, 1-2 hours rising
dough
6 tablespoons warm water
2 tablespoons room temperature white wine
3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast – about half of one of those little packets
1/2 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cups room temperature flour
assembly
cornmeal for sprinkling
flour for dusting counter
plenty of torn-up buffalo mozzarella
a few portabella mushrooms
1 onion
1 red bell pepper
tomato sauce (recipe below)
1. Whisk wine, water and yeast in a medium bowl until yeast has dissolved. Add honey, salt and olive oil and stir. Add flour, and no matter how dry it looks, work it with a spoon and your fingers until it comes together as a dough.
2. Sprinkle some flour on the counter and knead the dough for a minute or two.
3. Wash the bowl you made the dough in, dry it and coat the inside with olive oil. Put the dough in, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rise for an hour or up to two, until it is doubled.
[Deb suggests: easiest way to tell if a dough has risen enough? Dip two fingers in flour, press them into the dough, and if the impression stays, it's good to go. If it pops back, let it go until it doesn't.]
3.5. Meanwhile, make some sauce [recipe below].
4. Preheat your grill to pretty stinkin’ hot. Cut and roast your veggies (mushrooms, bell pepper, onion), then set them aside for later. Sprinkle a baking pan/wooden cutting board with cornmeal.
5. Once the dough has doubled, turn it out onto a floured counter and gently deflate the dough with the palm of your hands. Form it into a ball and let it rest on a floured spot with either plastic wrap over it (sprinkle the top of the dough with flour so it doesn’t stick) or an upended bowl. In 15 minutes, it will be ready to roll out.
6. Do so on the floured counter until darn thin, maybe 1/8″ thick, then lift it onto a cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet/cutting board.
7. Scoot dough onto hot grill. Let it toast until the underside is golden and lovely – the time it takes to do this will wholly depend on your particular grill peculiarities – then scoot it off the grill and onto the baking sheet/cutting-board again. Arrange your toppings on the cooked side, then it’s back onto the heat again until the bottom is just as golden and lovely as the top. Remove from grill.
8. Optional Effort Step: heat up your oven’s broiler and singe the mozzarella just a few minutes for that genuine wood-fired pizza look so popular these days.
Really Ridiculously Low Effort Tomato Sauce
from smittenkitchen.
makes: enough for the above dough’s pizza
time: 10 min prep, 30 min simmering on stove
8 roma tomatoes
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
6 cloves of garlic, minced
big ole pinch of red pepper flakes
several splashes of of white wine
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1. Bring medium pot of water to a boil. Poach the tomatoes for one minute only, and then drain them. As soon as they are cooled off enough that you can touch them, peel them. The peels should come right off. If they don’t, make a slit in the skins.
2. Drain and dry the pot. Put it back on the burner over medium heat. Pour in olive oil and let it heat completely before adding the garlic and stirring it for a minute with a wooden spoon. Add the red pepper flakes and stir it for anther minute. You do not want the garlic to brown.
3. Put the peeled tomatoes in the pot, along with the wine, sugar and salt. Break the tomatoes up with your spoon.
4. Let the sauce simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, adding wine as needed, until the tomatoes break down. Carefully taste without burning your tongue and adjust seasonings, if necessary.
Related reading:
Here’s the deal: freezing the dough is great. Just freeze before the 2nd rise – put into balls and oil them slightly. Wrap each tightly in plastic wrap and freeze. When you want pizza, thaw them out, let rise and grill as usual. Great!
Oh – the sauce freezes nicely, too.