Pizza Day!

Tomorrow is Pizza Day at Slashfood, so tonight we experimented with grilled pizza dough for the first time. I selected two Cooking Light recipes, White Pizza and Chocolate Pizza with Apricot Preserves and Bananas. Of course, I couldn't just follow the recipes, so here's what I did:

The recipe for the Chocolate Pizza included dough from scratch, so I took my own advice and substituted whole wheat pastry flour for all-purpose. I also didn't feel like kneading for 10 minutes (in large part because I don't have a good surface for it) so I used my stand mixer with the dough hook. The recipe said the dough would be sticky, and it was, but in the end, I had six nicely elastic rounds of dough (the recipe called for five rounds but I made six - four for the White Pizza and two for the Chocolate Pizza).

The White Pizza called for a prepared pizza crust like Boboli, but I used the dough from the Chocolate Pizza instead. I made four rounds, each approximately 6 inches in diameter, and Marc grilled them for two minutes on each side. He brought them in, and I mostly followed the recipe directions, although I added slices of Trader Joe's Beef Prosciutto for some protein and flavor. I also used beefsteak tomatoes instead of plum because they looked nicer at the market. I baked the pizzas at 375 degrees (instead of the 425 called for in the recipe) for 10 minutes.

For the Chocolate Pizza, I substituted strawberry jam for the apricot preserves because that's what I had on hand. It had the unintended effect of making a real mock-pizza, with the jam taking the place of tomato sauce. Although the recipe called for the entire pizza to be prepared on the grill, Marc grilled the dough and then I finished the pizzas off in the oven.

I'd call this dinner a successful experiment, if only because we managed to grill the pizza dough - something I had thought about but always been afraid of doing (I had visions of the pizza dough falling apart and slipping through the slats on the grill). Now I need to work on the taste of the dough, because it needs a little more oomph. Maybe some herbs or cheese if the pizza is savory, and some honey if it's sweet. When's the next Pizza Day?