Summer that was Pizza!

Making (and learning)…

I followed a pizza making course on line this summer!  Specifically outdoor grilling pizza—grilling flat bread, pizza, and finally Calzones.  I did my homework which meant I made a pizza thing each week.
It turned out to be a team effort because I do not do fire, so Jim became the fire master.  We learned the hard way that this was especially important if you want the pizza thing to actually COOK.

Pizza dough is a thing of dreams!  The dough is soft and miraculous, rising, fragile, and resilient, a pleasure to work.  And you need a lot of semolina or it sticks to everything and doesn’t want to come off the peel.  I know this from experience.  You may start out with a shape you are familiar with, and you may end up with a shape that defies logic.

Flat bread is….flat.  And it should be crispy.  This is where we finally learned the importance of a hot fire.

The other thing about making pizza is that it doesn’t allow a lot of time to think about taking pictures!  There were moments when checking the pizza thing was the ONLY thing I could focus on.

But here it is when I finally managed to get a pizza that was round.  When grilling pizza, you put the dough on the grill and grill one side.  Then you remove it, flip it, add the toppings, and put it back on the grill to finish.

We were getting the hang of it!

Then came the week’s assignment for Calzones.  I had to work myself up for this one….  This recipe called for a spinach and cheese filling, dough wrapped around and sealed.  On the peel it actually looks like a Calzone.

But on the grill they took on a shape of their own.  They may look a little odd and wonky—another lesson in the dough sticking to the peel…and not wanting to come off.   But, oh my, these were good, especially the next day.

You will notice there are no pictures of us eating the various pizza things, but I can assure you we did eat them—every single bit.  We devoured them, melting cheese and all.

When it was too hot to cook in the house, the in door heat was perfect for rising pizza dough, and grilling was a good idea.  Though it was darn hot standing over the grill too.  The learning was fun!  The team work was fun! And the eating was good too.

Next summer we will dough it again!