Grilled Pizza Margherita

LET’S GO

PREPARATION

Grilled pizza margherita is an Italian classic that you can whip up at home and on the grill too! We all love wood fired pizza but sometimes don’t have the tools or the time – use your fast heating 1500F Otto Grill to do the trick with a 4 minute grill time! The dough needs a bit of time to prepare, but get that ready the day before and you’ll be speaking the language of love. No, not Italian but pizza margherita!

1. Prepare Pizza Dough

   First, prepare the pizza dough. Prepare a sponge from yeast by combining yeast to your water and flour mixture: 10 oz. water and 1/2 cup (50 g.) of flour. Let the mixture rest for 15 minutes.

2. Knead Pizza Dough

   In the meantime, combine the remaining 3.5 c. flour with 2 tsp. sugar in a wooden bowl. Once the sponge has rested sufficiently, add it slowly to the sugar and flour mixture using a kitchen machine or your hands until smooth. Then, add the other 10 oz. of water a little at a time and working it into the mixture. Add salt and mix. Then, add the olive oil and knead everything well.

3. Resting Dough

   Remove the dough from the bowl and form a ball. Then, place it back into the bowl and cover it with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel. Let the dough rest for 1.5 hours (or, even better 2-3 hours) until it has doubled in volume.

4. Tomato Sauce

   In the meantime, prepare the tomato sauce. Heat up some oil in a pan and add the onion cubes. Once the onions have started to sweat, add the garlic. Cook until both onions and garlic are soft but do not caramelize them or let them get a brown color. Then, add the tomatoes to the onion-garlic mixture. When everything has cooked well, add basil, oregano and bay leaves. Simmer at a low temperature for 30 minutes to condense the sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
   Tip: In addition to fresh tomatoes, use tomato paste for more intense sauce.

5. Roll Dough Balls

   After the the dough has rested, remove the dough from the bowl and divide it into 5 even portions. Roll each portion into a small ball. Cover the balls with a clean kitchen towel and let them rest for another 30 minutes.

GRILLING

1. Preheat Grill for Pizza

   Now it’s time to preheat the Otto Grill. Place the pizza stone on the grill grate support beams at Meat-O-Meter level 3-4. Let the pizza stone heat up for 5 minutes so that it reaches a temperature of around 750°F. Lower the height of the pizza stone to Meat-O-Meter level 5 and adjust the temperature to the lowest position.

   Important: please do not move the pizza stone higher than Meat-O-Meter level 3-4 as this may cause a heat accumulation in the burners.

2. Roll Out Dough & Toss

   While its heating up, roll out the dough. Place each dough ball one at a time on a well-floured cutting board. Take a rolling pin to roll each portion into a thin circle or square (for more surface space). If you know how to arm roll dough and then toss — let it rip!

3. Grill Margherita Pizza

   Add some flour onto the pizza stone, place the pure dough on it and let it bake for 1 minute. Then, remove it from the grill and add al the fixings: the tomato sauce and mozzarella. Grill it for another 1-2 minutes at medium temperature on Meat-O-Meter Level 5 until the mozzarella melts. Remove the pizza from the Otto Grill, add some basil leaves and serve immediately.