So as you may remember, pizza is not exactly a new challenge for us, but even so I was excited that a new pizza dough would be the recipe for this month, hosted by Rosa at Rosa’s Yummy Yum Yums. I’m always interested to try different takes on pizza crusts, and while my mom has gone through several iterations, I’m still not sure she’s found the perfect recipe.

This dough, from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, was decidedly different from the other pizza crust I or my parents have made in the past, not so much in the ingredients or proportions, but in its method. Instead of letting the dough rise after mixing all the ingredients together, it’s formed into balls and refrigerated for 1-3 days, then rested at room temperature for “exactly” 2 hours before forming into crusts. The result was a dough that we found very difficult to work with — as soon as we tried to lift up one of the disks, it just kept stretching and stretching and stretching, so that it often tore, and was very hard to get even. I tried doing the traditional “tossing” method, but for the most part, the dough just stretched too thin for that as soon as I picked it up, so it was more a game of picking it up as quickly as possible and laying it on the pizza peel before it got any holes in it. (My parents came over for dinner the night we made this, so I put her to work shaping dough as she’s much more practiced at it than I am. I’ll try to see if she’ll let me take some instructional pictures at some point.)

Even though it was hard to work with, though, this dough had a really excellent flavor. I think it might’ve been from the tablespoon of sugar, but it just seemed like it had a little more flavor than our normal dough recipe, and it was a nice balance between crispy and chewy. So I’m not writing it off yet. Next time I think I might try letting it rise a bit before refrigerating it to develop the gluten a bit more. I also think it needed more flour — the dough seemed kind of shaggy even after sprinkling a fair amount on top, so that might help as well.

On the topping front, we tried a new potato pizza inspired by this one at Smitten Kitchen, but changed around a fair amount. We also made a couple of our familiar favorites — caramelized onions with blue cheese; feta, bacon, pesto, and pine nuts; and margarita — tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil. For more topping ideas try here or here.

Pizza Dough

4 1/2 c high gluten flour (I used Giusto’s high performance flour)
1 3/4 t salt
1 t instant yeast
1/4 c olive oil
1 3/4 c cold water
1 T sugar
cornmeal

Mix together the flour, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Ad olive oil, water, and sugar. Knead 5-7 minutes, until smooth. (However, the dough should still be pretty sticky, as well as springy an elastic.)

Cut into 6 pieces, sprinkle with flour and roll into balls, and place on an oiled jelly roll pan. Lightly spray oil on the dough, and then cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours and up to 3 days.

Two hours before you plan to make the pizza, remove from the refrigerate. Gently press each ball into a disk about a 1/2 inch thick, flour and spray lightly with oil, and cover loosely for 2 hours.

When ready to make the pizza, first preheat the oven as hot as it will go, with a pizza stone on the middle rack. (For me, that was 550 F.) Sprinkle a pizza peel (or the back of a pan) with cornmeal. Form the disk into a thin circle, either by hand or using a rolling pin. I actually think it’s easier to do it by hand, but I don’t really try to toss it. Instead, I kind of lay the dough over my fists and kind of move it around in a circle while gently stretching it. Or, I turn the disk vertically, and kind of turn it round and round while holding the top edge, to let it stretch itself with its own weight. At least, that’s what I normally do, but this dough stretched so much that all I had to do was carefully lift it up and then set it back down on the peel.

Top the pizza, then slide it onto the pizza stone. Cook a few minutes, until the crust is lightly browned and the cheese is melted.

Potato Pizza

crème fraîche
2 small red potatoes, thinly sliced
2-3 T herbs, such as basil, rosemary, parsley, thyme, chives, etc.
2-3 cloves of garlic
salt
pepper
olive oil
1 pizza crust

Chop the herb and garlic together. Add salt and pepper to the herb/garlic mixture and make into a paste. Let sit for at least a half hour or so if possible to let the flavors meld.

Spread the crust with crème fraîche. Top with the potatoes in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the herbs and a bit of extra salt. (Remember how much salt potatoes need and don’t be too cautious!) Bake a few minutes in as hot an oven as possible, until lightly browned.

I think this is the longest gap in posting I’ve had, at least in a good while, and I’m sorry. What can I say — we’ve been traveling a lot (the summer of 5 weddings is now done. phew!), I’ve been pretty busy at work, we’re trying to train for a triathlon in September, I’ve been sick for the past several days, and our camera has pooped out on us so we haven’t really been able to take pictures of what little we have been cooking! Basically, life gets in the way.

Anyway, I did still have a couple of things saved up from before the camera started screwing up, so hopefully I can now get back on the ball and these will tide me over until we can get the camera fixed!

So no more of this whining about being busy — let’s talk about pizza! Grilled pizza is something we tried for the first time on the weekend of a thousand posts I keep talking about. I have to admit, my parents’ pizza oven back in Raleigh has pretty well spoiled me for pizza. It took a few years, but they really have it down pat now and make some pretty excellent pizza. I’ve occasionally made pizza on our pizza stone (thanks, Saket!) in the oven, but it’s never quite as good as I want it to be. However, grilling pizza is really the way to go to me. This makes a nice crispy crust, seemed to be pretty forgiving if you’re not able to get the crust as thin as you’d like (that’s me!), and cooks everything pretty fast which is nice for making a lot of different types of pizza to please everyone. I’m not trying to say it’s as good as wood-fired, but it might start to be on the same spectrum, and if you’re 3,000 miles away from the pizza oven you’re used to, it makes a pretty darn good substitute.

For the dough, I of course used a recipe from my mom, which she in turn got from the folks over at Mugnaini, where they bought their pizza oven. She has done a lot of experimenting with pizza dough recipes over the year, and this one is her favorite. The topping combinations listed at the bottom are also some of the favorites my parents have refined. What do you like on your pizza? I’d always love to hear your suggestions in the comments!

Grilled Pizza

We use the recipe from Mugnaini pizza dough, which you can get from that link, enough for 6-8 pizzas. I’ve got the ingredients list below, but I’ll let you read her instructions, and I’ll pick up on what I did after making the dough.

Mom thinks that having nice flour really makes a difference in how easy the dough is to work with. She recommends Giusto’s High Performance Pizza Flour, which you can buy online (another trick she learned from Mugnaini cooking school — do you see a trend here? I promise they aren’t paying me anything!).

4 c flour
1 t salt
1 1/2 c warm water
2 t yeast dissolved in 1/4 c warm water

Making the dough: Follow the instructions for making the dough you can find here, all the way through. You will then end up with 6 or 8 balls of dough. (Basically you are going to mix everything together and knead, let it rise for 2.5-3 hours, cut it into balls, and let it rest another 20 minutes.)

Par-baking: If I’m going to grill the pizzas, I then par-bake the dough. To do this, turn the oven on as high as it will go (for me that’s 525) and place a pizza stone in the oven.

Roll or stretch out the crusts. (I’m hoping to persuade my mom to do a more detailed instructional post with me on this one. Throwing around pizza dough like the professionals is much harder than it looks, and she’s much better at it than I am! You can leave her comments here to urge her to participate in this effort. )

Once the oven is hot, slide the rolled/stretched out dough onto the pizza stone. Let it bake just a couple minutes, flip it, bake it a couple minutes more, and pull it out of the oven. The idea here is to only barely bake the dough, making it a lot easier to work with when you put it on the grill. This is also nice for entertaining because you can take care of all the messy dough-making before people come over. The crusts can even be frozen for a few weeks after they are par-baked as well.

Grilling: To grill the pizza, first start a medium-high to high fire in the grill (we used charcoal, which I think adds to the flavor). Top the par-baked crusts however you like. Slip the crust directly onto the grill rack and cover. Grill about 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the crust is done but not burned on the bottom. (Keep an eye on them. They may cook more quickly/slowly depending on your fire, and honestly, we didn’t time it, so we’re going on our memory from a few weeks ago here.)

Topping Ideas:

• White pizza (first one shown above)

Combine 1 T chopped fresh basil, 1 T dried oregano, 6 minced cloves of garlic, and 1/2 t ground black pepper. (This make enough for more than one pizza.) Spread dough with olive oil then herbs. Top with shredded mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced fontina cheese, and grated parmesan cheese. We often add chopped prosciutto and/or pine nut, too. Possibly my favorite kind of pizza!

• Pesto Chicken (second one shown above)

Top with pesto sauce, grilled chicken, feta cheese, pine nuts, and parmesan. Bacon is also a good addition.

• More delicious pizza ideas from Melting Your Mouth

I think this is finally the end of my Christmas Eve dinner posts, at least until next year!

As you can see, my parents have a wood-fired pizza oven, which makes for a nice party centerpiece as well as some absolutely delicious pizzas, and also other dishes including breads, meat, and roasted vegetables.

These are not so much recipes as lists of some combinations of toppings we enjoy for pizzas. As I said, we served them as appetizers, but they can definitely make a good main dish instead. Most of these are based on ideas from Mugnaini, the company where my parents bought their oven and where they recently went to cooking school. The last one is based on something we had at Myth, a restaurant in San Francisco.

Sometime I promise to share my parents’ delicious new recipe for pizza dough as well (assuming they’ll share it with me first!).

What are some of your favorite pizza toppings? I’d love to hear more suggestions in the comments section!

Creme Fraiche and Smoked Salmon

(or as my uncle David nicknamed it, “The Stinky Frenchman”)
adapted from Mugnaini

Top pizza with creme fraiche, lemon zest, and dill; bake.
As soon as it comes out of the oven, top with smoked salmon, cut into strips. (It’s much tastier than it looks in the photo, I promise!)

Wilted Spinach, Fontina, and Truffle Oil

adapted from Mugnaini

Top pizza with barely wilted spinach and fontina. After baking, drizzle with truffle oil.

Blue Cheese and Caramelized Onion

adapted from Mugnaini

Caramelize onions by slicing them and cooking them over pretty low heat until they turn golden and sweet. Top pizza with chopped thyme, caramelized onions, and maytag blue cheese.

Prosciutto and Roasted Red Pepper

adapted from Myth, San Francisco

I know honey sounds kind of strange to put on a pizza, but don’t be too sparing. It nicely cuts the saltiness of the prosciutto and gorgonzola.

Make a sauce by roasting red pepper and then pureeing it. You can mix this with a bit of creme fraiche for a creamier texture. (We are not on agreement over which was more like the one at Myth.) Top this with prosciutto, crumbled gorgonzola, chopped chives, parmesan cheese, and a generous drizzle of honey.