I have been putting this post off since, (let me check my calendar quick), yeah, MARCH 11TH. Has it really been over a month since my last post? No, it hasn’t. Never mind, April 11th. I can’t read a calendar. The point is that I have been avoiding the blog. Probably because of this post. I have been building it up like it’s going to be a huge thing and that’s causing me to dread writing it. So, thanks to Steam, I am now going to do what is probably going to be something fun and easy in a focused and totally beautiful atmosphere. Why I don’t walk to this place every single day I have no idea. If nothing else, I think I’ve at least discovered my new blogging spot.
Without further ado, the long awaited (by me, mostly) blog post on How to Host a Make Your Own Grilled Pizza Party!
Let’s be real everybody, I am partial to attention. To the point where if my friend is having a birthday party then I offer to throw it so I can take the credit for whatever delicious food or tasteful party favors were enjoyed by his guests. By his, I am referring to my very close friend Matty, who just (well… you know… back in Marpril) celebrated his birthday. I offered to cater the party with a make your own pizza setup, where I would bring a bunch of premade uncooked pizza rounds and let everyone put their own personal toppings on their own personal pizzas. And then grill them, because grilled pizza is one of those things everyone seems to be a fan of but no one has really tried. (If you’re on the fence, try it. It’s so easy and adds a ton of flavor.)
Okay. So. The first thing I did was to find a recipe for pizza dough which could be portioned into mini pizzas (in this case four, and then I tripled it because I need 8 and wanted 4 extra pizzas).
A quick word on grilled pizza.
Grilled pizza can be a little bit of a challenge if you aren’t dealing with cooperative dough. The hardest part of grilled pizza is getting the pizza on to the grill. The grill needs to be hot, and the dough needs to be thick enough that it doesn’t fall apart while you are trying to get it from the pan to the grill.
Have you seen Aliens? There is a part in it where a failed clone cries out “Kill Me!!!!”, asking to be destroying because it was such an atrocity. Once upon a time, a friend and I rolled our dough out on a cookie sheet very thin, without much flour to keep it from sticking to the bottom. It came apart in pieces when we tried to slide it on to the grill, fell through the cracks, and is still cooking off today everytime I heat the grill. If you listen closely enough, you can still hear it screaming “Kill me!!!” when I heat the grill.
This is not what you want, right? Right, I am not doing this blog for Buffalo Bill, so you need to make sure the dough is thick enough that it will hold together during the transition, that there is flour on whatever surface it’s sitting on to help it slide off, and that the grill is hot enough to cook the crust before it starts to drip down between the griddle and you create suffering sentient life. There are two ways to do this.
- Put a LOT of flour down on whatever surface the pizza is being built on, keep the raw dough a little thick, and quickly slide it off the plate onto the grill. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, and is actually how I did it the first time I tried to make grilled pizza, which was a huge success if I do say so myself, which I do.
- Pre-cook the dough just a little bit so it begins to firm up, and then use a spatula to transfer it from the plate to the grill. (We could have put that baking sheet in the oven for a few minutes to help the thin dough stiffen up and slide off easier, but instead we massacred it). Interestingly enough, the dough recipe I found says you can do this the night before, and so that’s what I did.
I used a combination of a recipe from food.com for Honey Pizza Dough and a technique I found on the blog Cheeky Kitchen.
When you finish making the the Honey Pizza Dough, just divide each batch into fourths, roll out the pizzas, and then bake them at 400 degrees for about 7 minutes. This helps the dough firm up, but not completely set. You can then wrap them in plastic wrap to keep them moist overnight, and bring them to your party the following day. A few more tips on how to get a great pizza dough:
I always weigh my flour rather than measure, because it’s much more accurate when you’re not using a sifter. Which honestly who has time to sift these days. Besides through e-mail. Which I don’t do. My inbox is another thing that shouts out “Kill Me!!!!”. Sorry, anyway, use the conversion 1 cup = 4.25 ounces for flour.
Yeast is super pungent, and if yours isn’t, you either used water that was too hot and killed it or it was too old. If your yeast isn’t alive, your pizza will fall flat. GET IT? FALL FLAT? BECAUSE…
You’ll know if your yeast works when your pizza goes from the above to the below:
Making the dough is honestly the only mildly challenging part of this whole process. If you don’t count yourself a baker, or you just don’t have time, you can always buy a pre-made variation of these crusts. I know Whole Foods carries them, I think it’s 2 personal pizzas individually packaged. The ingredients for baking your own are cheap though, and the results are much more exciting. Not to mention you can always throw in something fun to your crust recipe, like cheese or spices. And if you’re like me (which god forbid how many of us can the world handle floating around at once), you get to brag about making all the pizza rounds from scratch. (Just make sure that when people tell you the pizza is delicious that you gracefully deflect and tell them that they’re the real chefs because they made the pizzas).
When you get to the party, be sure to set out your crusts and then all of your ingredients. Actual amounts for those ingredients can vary widely, but here is what I used for about 8 people (12 pizzas):
- About 16 ounces of Mozzarella
- Between 8 and 16 ounces of Medium Cheddar
- 1 Large Yellow Onion
- 2-3 Jalapeños, diced or sliced
- 1 small can of black olives
- 1 diced tomato
- Two Italian sausages, removed from casings and sautéed with some of the onion
- About 6 cups of sauce, or around a half cup of sauce per pizza, depending on if all of your pizzas will be red or some will be white then maybe a little less…
- Fresh Basil
- A small package of pre-silced Pepperoni (Hormel probably)
- 1 Bell Pepper
- 8 ounces Fresh Mozzarella
Honestly, the best way to setup toppings is to ask your guests what they like, and try to have a little bit of everything. The worst that can happen if you overdo it on the toppings (and admittedly I did a little bit), is that you get to make more dough and have pizza at home once or twice after your party. Just be creative… you can make barbecue chicken pizzas, pineapple ham pizzas, or you can even add a fried egg on top – which is amazing despite how unhealthy it might actually be.
The most important thing is to just enjoy yourself. Enjoy making the crust the day before because you’re doing something for other people, enjoy putting the toppings on your own pizza because being creative is liberating, enjoy cooking them – whether they fall apart on the grill or you chicken out and bake them instead, cooking should be about joy. (Note this only applies to Make Your Own Pizza Parties. Taking joy in everything you do is painfully cliche and I forbid it. Maybe.)
Happy Birthday again Matt, thanks Kristin for pushing me to get this posted, and thanks Danielle for helping me realize I was turning something fun into a chore. Until then everyone,
Chris