Light, fresh pizzas are perfect summer food, but who wants to heat up the kitchen oven to 500 degrees? Grilling pizzas makes so much sense. And this grill method that Maggy and I demonstrate in this week’s USA Weekend video is the best, quickest way to get that crisp crust we all love.
Grilled Fresh Tomato and Greek Salad Pizza
If making pizza dough from scratch, make it a couple of hours ahead and let it rise.
by: Three Many Cooks
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- 4 large Italian plum tomatoes, sliced thin (juice from sliced tomatoes reserved)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 pound store bought or ½ recipe homemade pizza dough
- Salt and ground black pepper
- 3 ounces (about ¾ cup) grated mozzarella cheese)
- 4 cups packed arugula or baby spinach
- ¼ cup coarsely chopped kalamata olives
- 2 ounces crumbled feta (about ½ cup)
Instructions
- Turn all burners of a gas grill on high or build a charcoal fire. Meanwhile, lay sliced tomatoes on a baking sheet. Mix 1 tablespoon of the oil with the minced garlic. Drizzle oil over tomatoes; set aside.
- Without punching or kneading dough (which makes stretching more difficult), turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Using a dough scraper or sharp knife, quarter dough crosswise. Working one at a time, stretch each portion into a rustic 12- by 3½- to 4-inch rectangle; transfer to a large cornmeal-coated baking sheet.
- Reduce grill heat to medium; lift stretched pieces of dough on grill. Cover and cook until bottoms are spotty brown, moving them around and punching dough down as necessary to ensure even cooking, 3 to 4 minutes. Return pizza crusts, grilled side up, to baking sheet, topping each with a portion of tomatoes (pouring any remaining garlicky tomato liquid onto salad greens. Lightly sprinkle tomatoes with salt and top with a portion of mozzarella cheese. Return pizzas to grill; cover and continue to grill until pizza bottoms are spotty brown, 3 to 4 minutes longer. Transfer to a cutting board.
- Meanwhile, toss arugula with olives, feta, remaining tablespoon of oil and a light sprinkling of salt and pepper. Drizzle in reserved tomato juice; toss to coat again. Top each pizza with a portion of salad; Transfer to a cutting board, cut into pieces and serve.
Pam…just had your Frogmore Stew from Perfect One Dish Dinners…and it was fantastic!! A resounding 5 star recipe! Out of our 200+ cookbooks, your 6 (soon to be 7, yea!) are our favorites and consistently provide us with 5 start recipes. You are awesome!!! Thanks so much for all the wonderful meals your recipes have provided for us!!
I love this pizza, but I have to say – this crust is what makes it. A crispy crust that’s fluffy too. For me, that’s the perfect combination.
And thanks for the awesome comment, RJ! I know it’s not for me – but still, any compliment for Mom makes me smile 🙂
This looks amazing- I want it for breakfast, now. 🙂
This combines three of my favorite things… Greek food, pizza and grilled food. My little frozen pizza I just took out of the oven looks so sad now.
This looks so delicious! I just need to find a good gluten-free pizza crust recipe. And someone with a grille. I’m sure I’ll find someone who wants to help me out on this one… 😉
Alice, check out Shauna Ahern’s site! (glutenfreegirl.com) I’m sure she has a pizza dough recipe. Also check out Jeanne Sauvage’s blog, The Art of Gluten Free Baking. Both are great places for gluten free everything!! 🙂
Sure, you can make pizza in your oven, but most of our ovens don’t get nearly as hot as those big wood- or charcoal-fired ones at the great pizza places. Make pizza on the grill, though, and you can get much closer to that that crisp crust and slightly smoky flavor we all love.
My reader just popped this up today(along with seven other posts here). I wanted to mention that The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking has am amazing gf pizza crust here:
http://hipgirlshome.com/blog/2011/2/14/gluten-free-pizza-dough.html
Love pizza on the grill! If you can believe it, we made pizza for 30 people on our grill last Friday!
If you don’t have a grill you can try broiling your pizzas. Its fantastic, quick and the closest thing to wood-fired pizza you can make at home (without a grill). Check out this link: http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/03/broiled-pizza.html
Hi gals! Alice, I do have a gluten-free (and dairy-free and egg-free) pizza recipe on my site. And I have directions for doing it in the oven or on the grill. Grilled pizza is so fun!
In our ill-equipped Hong Kong kitchen, we don’t have a grill / broiler – just two gas rings. I’d never even thought about putting pizza on a grill or skillet so will be dusting off my Cath Kidston apron and seeing what I can achieve with a skillet pan alone. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know!
LOVE pizzas like this!!! The best pizza I ever had was made with fresh arugula on top! This one you made looks like heaven!
Just tried this technique last night and it was unbelievably easy. I have always had trouble making pizza, and this was finally the first time I did it right. Thanks 3MC!
Thanks so much for this. We haven’t done the Greek version, just the basic pizza dough, which is the best we have found! And making it on the grill is just brilliant. A new family favorite. 🙂
This is a great idea! It never dawned on me to grill pizza and I think it tastes so much better than in the oven. Anyway, I had some ratatouille left over (this is from your recipe) and put it on the pizza; threw in a little bit of goat cheese and my husband and I were in pizza heaven. Absolutely wonderful! Thanks again for all your recipes.