Grilled Pizza

We've been playing with pizza lately. I'm a total pizza junkie, by the way, and while delivery is convenient, it gets pricey.

Our first pizza making attempt was actually to replicate one from back home. I miss Deano's and Bisbano's! Anyway, the one I'd been feigning for that particular week was a spicy shrimp pizza -- no one puts shrimp on pizza out here, and if they do, it's not in the combination that we used to get back home -- so we made it ourselves. And it turned out pretty good.

But last night we decided to try grilled pizza. My aunt sent me a dough recipe for grilling and it might be my imagination, but I think it was slightly different than the dough we'd used for our shrimp pizza. I could be wrong, but it seemed less doughy. You can see that we still used one of those foil grill sheets, just in case. (Regular dough recipe came from Food Network Magazine's pizza insert a few months back. The recipe can be found here. I can't find the grilled dough recipe, but suspect that decreasing the water slightly will work to get the same result with any standard pizza dough.)

I rolled mine out really thin -- Mike made his a little thicker, but the crust charred on the bottom, so for grilling, thin seems to be the better way to go. We then topped the pizzas on the foil sheets to make for easier transport to the grill. With the burners on low and the lid down, it took about 5 minutes or so to cook.

All in all, I think our dough needs a little adjustment. The pizza kind of tasted like frozen grocery store pizza and I think adding some flavor to the dough itself may fix that a bit. We've also yet to come up with a sauce recipe so that could be a reason as well. Another note is that while the dough did cook through, I prefer my toppings a bit more cooked than five minutes allowed. Any longer, though, and you end up with blackened crust. Remember to go thin!

Next step in my homemade pizza making process will be making my own giardienara since I've discovered that it's pretty amazing on pizza!

And if you want to add shrimp Deano's style: Buy 1 lb of peeled, deveined popcorn or slightly larger shrimp -- you won't need the whole pound, but you can use the rest on a salad or something. Boil in Zatarain's Crab Boil (comes in a small concentrate bottle -- follow bottle instructions carefully!).

For shrimp pizza, I like pepperoni, onion, spicy Italian sausage, and bell pepper. For regular pizza, I love fresh jalapeno with pepperoni and/or pineapple. But hey, it's pizza! You can do whatever you want with it! I would also recommend trying chicken cooked in crab boil. That would be fantastic on a pizza as well.