We fired up the grill last night and I had some 48 hour cold fermentation dough ready to rock! I’ve tried grilled pizza a few times before but never got the exact result I was looking for. I used to do the two-zone method, in which you keep a screaming-hot charcoal fire on one side of the grill and leave the other side unheated. You first bake the dough on the coaled side before flipping the half-cooked dough onto the unheated side, then add your toppings, close the lid and finish with indirect heat.
My problem was always that the center would cook so much faster than the outer edge. So last night I tested a method I like to call “Doughnut Style.” You build a hot fire covering the entire floor of the grill space but slide the charcoal out of the center, leaving a doughnut-shaped heat source and dougnut-hole center. This way, the outer edge bakes and the center gets enough heat coming off the outer rim of coals. The result was great, but I still have some work to do before I’m really satisfied.
In the meantime, here are some highlights from last night…
Yup, that’s the prettiest one of the night. It has a base of ricotta, followed by roasted red peppers, low-moisture mozzarella, basil, pecorino and balsamic vinegar. I still want to brown that outer crust a bit more, maybe I’ll make the fire bigger next time.
This one was the strangest, yet most tasty, of the night. Low-moisture mozzarella, ricotta, HOT DOGS and salsa. Don’t be a hater.
This is a photo I took of a guest taking a photo of me holding a pizza with grilled corn, roasted red peppers and low-moisture mozzarella. I call both the pizza and the photo “Pizza Paparazzi (feat. corn).”
