A Grilled Pizza Success!

Happy Thursday friends!

If you’re in the New England area, my guess is that you too are waking up to some GORGEOUS weather!  Last night was the first night this week without AC, and it’s even a bit cool waking up.

I even decided to make myself a hot cappuccino this morning.  A nice change from the iced versions I’ve been enjoying all week…

Iced cap with the rest of a container of 0% Fage + banana + raspberries + cereal + homemade blueberry sauce.

And…

FOAMY iced cap with a protein pancake topped with PB + AB, with bananas + raspberries.

I love how the cappuccino still has the espresso settled on the bottom and, then some milk mixed in, and foam on top…triple layered!

My workouts this week have all been DANCE! 
I love when that happens!

I know I’ve mentioned before, but I am in my friend’s dance company this summer.  It’s mostly contemporary, which is new for me, and so far I am loving it!  The show is Sept 9 & 10 in Milford, NH and it will be awesome!  If anyone’s interested just let me know ;)

Dance also makes me the most sore out of any exercise I’ve ever done…and the best part is that you don’t feel like your “working out'”.  But really, somehow the part of my body from my armpit down to my ribcage is SO SORE, its a struggle to just lift my arms!  It’s weird when you’re sore in a new place…I still don’t understand how it happened.

I had rehearsal Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday…each for 3 hours.  Then 3 more hours this coming Sunday.  At least I won’t feel bad if I don’t get any other workouts in!

Wow, talk about sidetracked…the star of this post is PIZZA!

I’ve always wanted to be able to make pizza on the grill.  However, I have only had many failed attempts. 

The worst was a few years ago when I was living with my bff in Somerville.  We tried on a charcoal grill that was clearly WAY to hot.  The dough just immediately charred the second it went on.  Fail.

Then my issue seemed to be flipping the dough.  See, you have to put the plain dough on first, cook one side, then flip, add toppings, and finish cooking. 

What I need is a huge spatula or maybe just a metal pizza peel.  Either way, the other night things actually went fairly well!

Grilled Steak + Caramelized Onion + Gorgonzola Pizza on Whole Wheat Crust

First the dough.  I used Sabrina’s recipe, only I used WHITE whole wheat flour instead of regular whole wheat flour.

I think I like using regular yeast better than instant.  I actually used this Hodgson Mill Active Dry yeast that is specially designed for whole grain flours!

I turned her dough recipe into 3 dough balls, 2 to be frozen for later use.

Other ingredients:

• Pizza dough of your choice
• Steak – either leftover, or we bought thin sliced steak, grilled it quickly before, then cut into pizza topping sized bites
• caramelized onions (the faster method)
• 1/2 medium onion (yellow or white) sliced thin
• Cook in 1T olive oil + 1 tsp butter over low/med-low heat
• cook, stirring occasionally and watch temp so onions do NOT brown.
• about 8 min later, add 1 tsp sugar
• cook for another 5 min, or until they seem ready and delicious to you :)
• part skim mozzarella
• gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
• chopped fresh rosemary
• olive oil

I didn’t really give quantities, because everyone likes more or less toppings on their pizza!

1. Heat your grill to med-med high (I have a gas grill, so I’m not sure the best method for other types)
2. Roll out your dough, place it on a pan to bring to the grill, and brush one side with olive oil
3. Get all your toppings ready, and set them up right by your grill…you need to move fast once the dough is flipped.
4. Now, place dough OIL SIDE DOWN on grill, and turn down the heat to low/med low.  You’re grill will still be hot enough from the heat up to cook the dough just as fast.
5. Now quickly brush the other exposed side of the dough with olive oil.
6. About 1min or so later, or once the dough starts to get golden on the bottom…FLIP!  This took team work with Brian and I to make sure the dough flipped.
7. Now quickly top your pizza!!  Brian and I just grabbed toppings and went to town as fast as we could.
8. Get that lid back down to make sure the cheese melts!
9. Our pizza only took a few more minutes at this point.  Keep checking it so the dough doesn't burn!

We were SO excited that it was working!!

and in no time, we had fresh pizza!

Still not the prettiest thing in the world, but SO delicious.

We also had some grilled zucchini and summer squash (firsts from our garden!).

um, yeah we easily devoured that whole pizza :)  It really wasn’t as big as it looks.

I LOVE LOVED this pizza.  The toppings were so flavorful.  I think next time I’d double the caramelized onions…because really they were the best part. 

The dough was delicious as well.

We both couldn’t get over how good this was!  And now we’re no longer afraid of grilling pizza!

Have you ever grilled pizza??  Any tips?? 

Time to take my little Pup-cake for a walk!

Plans for the weekend??

• I have my friends baby shower Saturday
• Dance on Sunday!