Grilled Pizza Friday Night

My dad was all excited about today being Friday because in Japan every Friday night we have pizza. I told him I would continue the tradition while we're here visiting and make pizza for dinner tonight. He even had the sauce frozen in portion sized bags with onions and garlic already sauteed- WOW!

I was very excited because I found the Fleischmann's Pizza Dough Yeast at the grocery store- at Christmas time, it was only available in the southern US- I bought 30 packets, can you tell how excited I was?

Given that it is about a million degrees here, not to mention, my parents have a slow electric oven, compared to our quick gas one, I decided to try out grilled pizza. I have seen it on some magazines recently while walking through bookstores, so I thought, "I could give this a shot". My uncle eats over every Friday too, and he was mentioning seeing grilled pizza on a cooking show. I made my crust as normal:

Crust:
1 packet yeast
2/3 cup very warm water
pinch sugar
2 cups flour
2 TBSP oil
1 1/2 tsp salt

Put yeast, water, sugar in bowl of mixer, let sit about 3 minutes. Add flour, oil, salt and mix until blended (use dough hook)- then knead on medium high about 5-6 minutes. I put the dough aside after mixing to rise (only about 10 minutes)- this was while I was getting other stuff ready (sauce and cheese).

This is where is gets fun and oh so easy- You just take small balls of the dough and roll them out on a slightly oiled surface, (just so the dough has a tiny bit of oil on it to keep it from sticking to the grill), mine were about 6-8 inches in diameter when rolled out. They should be flat, no crust. I brought the dough circles out to the grill, cleaned off the grates with a wire brush, sprayed on some pam, and set the grill to medium. I put the dough circles on the grill to cook, here's what they looked like:



Then, they all the sudden began to rise (after about 3-4 minutes)- and I knew it was time to flip them. See here:



At this point, I took them off the grill (you can do this on the grill if you're not worried about getting burned), put them on a plate, and with the cooked side up, added the sauce, cheese, and seasoning. I put the pizzas back on the grill (with the uncooked side down) for about 6-8 more minutes and they were ready to eat. We did not close the top of the grill while they were cooking. We just left them on there until the cheese was melting and the bottoms appeared brown.

Check this slice out from the side, the dough rose so much just sitting on top of the grill:



Here's the bottom, crispy, not oily, just GOOD:



This will become a habit in my house, it's really good, fast, and no pan to clean up! If you've never made grilled pizza before, now's the time to try, what are you waiting for?

Now, I have extra motivation to get my grill in Japan fixed when I go back home.