Last day with no kids in the house, so I figured I would cook up coming nice for the missus.

I stumbled upon a very easy recipe for a pizza dough, so I thought I would try out the baking stone we got alongside the Weber. Not an expensive stone, actually I think it was the cheapest they had, so my expectations were not that high.

I started off by putting the dough together, only using the food processor with the dough blade in it – those who know me, knows that I do not like getting my fingers too dirty 🙂

Pizza dough:

400 grams of all-purpose flour
11 grams of dry yeast
1 table spoon of crushed sea salt
2 table spoons of olive oil
2.25 dl of lukewarm water

Combine the dry ingredients (flour, yeast and salt) in the food processor and spin it for about 30 seconds to have it all blended together. Have the food processor running on low speed as you slowly pour in the oil and the water. As the dough should now thicken up, you might want to speed up the processor a bit.

If the dough is too sticky, give it a table spoon of flour and wait until it is fully blended into the dough to see if it helps. If the dough is too dry, add a table spoon of water to make it a bit more wet.

The final dough should be firm, non-sticky but moist to the touch. Roll the dough into a ball and put it in a bowl with a clean cloth covering it. Place it somewhere nice and warm and let it raise for 1-2 hours. If you are planning ahead, you can also put the dough in the fridge to have it raise more slowly for around 6-8 hours.

As the dough is large enough for two pizzas, I looked in the fridge and decided on caramelized onions with balsamic vinegar for one of them, and prosciutto with fresh parmesan cheese for the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the dough rising, I decided to proceed with thinly slicing the onions (3 large in total) and putting the slices on a hot, oily pan. Keep them moving so they do not burn, and add oil and a little butter and salt along the way. When they have a healthy brown color and sweet taste, pour them into a plastic container and add about a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Mix it all together with a fork, and set it aside. By the way, the caramelized onions can be kept in the fridge for up to a week.

As the dough had risen for 90 minutes, I fired up the grill to have it ready when the dough was done. After about 30 minutes the coals were ready for use, so I put on the baking stone and closed the lid to raise the temperature to about 230C.

The now-twice-as-big dough was parted in to, and each part was shaped to fit onto the baking stone.

Baking the pizzas:

Put the dough on the pizza stone – without any toppings on it yet! Let it bake inside the closed grill for about 6 minutes.

After these 6 minutes, open the lid, put on the toppings – for me, this would be the prosciutto, followed by a dash of olive oil, grated parmesan and fresh basil leaves. Close the lid and let it cook for another 5-6 minutes. Voila! Your pizza is done!

Admitted, I did not imagine it would be that easy, so this is definitely something we would do any day!