Okay, so I went into making this pizza with a lot of curiosity.
First, the dough is formed from bread flour. It also didn’t include any sugar to activate the yeast. Next, this dough also needed to rest for 1 ½ hours to expand, like a traditional dough. At some point, the zucchini are salted and rest on a colander to remove their moisture. Then of course, this pizza is baked on the grill and then under the broiler.
It actually was easy, but it was a lot to think about and I’m excited to share with you just what I discovered!
Like I said, there were some things I was not sure about. First, I wanted to know if sugar was accidentally left off the recipe. Don’t you need to have it to feed the yeast? What I discovered with a quick search is that Instant / Rapid rise yeast does not require sugar. Just add it to room temperature water for 5 minutes and you’re golden.
The next one was bread flour. I had used this before and felt like it wasn’t the best for making pizza. Would it work well with this recipe? Or would it come tasting like toast?
Last, I was a little worried because this recipe called for using a stand mixer and dough hooks. I don’t have that. I could have gone old school and just used my hands. But in my last review I ran the dough through a food processor. So I figured, using my handheld mixer was worth a shot.
DOUGH
Turns out that the mixer worked like a charm….until that one point when the dough started to climb up and devour one of my beaters. At that point, I knew the dough was done. And it was surprisingly easy to work with. I simply used a silicone spatula and quickly separated the dough from the beaters. That was definitely a relief.
I took a few minutes to kneed (press with my hands) the dough to really bind it together into a cohesive mass. Pretty quickly I was able to form a good size ball, oiled it lightly, and placed it in a large bowl with a lid.
The dough sat on a prep table in indirect sunlight for an hour and a half. During that time it like tripled in size! Of course, that left me with plenty of dough for two pizzas.
This may be my favorite discovery. When I removed the dough from the bowl, it was so pillowy soft, and remarkably easy to work with. I couldn’t believe how it felt. It was like a giant marsh mellow. Because of the oil, I didn’t really need to flour my hands. Of course, I covered the counter with a dusting of flour, and a bit on the rolling pin to keep everything from sticking, just in case.
After cutting the dough in half, I had to fold it and kneed it again until it formed another ball. That was no problem. The gluten was very relaxed, with almost no snap back when I rolled it out. This is almost always a source of frustration for me when making pizzas, so I was really pleased with the results.
For this recipe, I decided to bake two pizzas, two different ways. Mostly because I was a little worried the grill wasn’t going to work out. But also, I was curious to see how versatile this recipe could be.
TOPPINGS
For the most part, these were pretty standard pizza toppings. Mushrooms, red onions, bell pepper, and cherry tomatoes, with zucchini being the exception. It also had really good cheese with fresh mozzarella and feta cheese.
I decided to use a store bought jar of Prego pizza sauce to keep it simple.
The recipe called for adding salt, pepper, and basil on the sauce. Instead, I added dry oregano, then added the basil as a finisher over the cheese before baking.
PIZZA STEEL IN OVEN
I made this one a pepperoni, with half mushroom and red onion for my wife and son. Being a vegetarian, I didn’t eat this trial of the pizza, so I had to rely on their feedback, which was very positive. They definitely made it disappear!
This pizza baked extremely well in the oven. It actually took an extra couple of minutes because the dough was a little thicker than the last pizza I reviewed. But that was no problem at all. It cooked all the way through. Had great flavor, with some crispiness to it. The toppings cooked properly and evenly.
This pizza did puff up a bit, but I just pierced it in a few spots and it survived with minimal scaring.
GRILLED IN A VENTED PAN
For the second trial, I made the pizza using the toppings and baking recipe provided by Katie at Good Life Eats. I placed my dough in my vented pizza pan to allow the flames to char the dough a bit. I used a non-stick spray that worked like a charm.
I layered on the sauce first, followed by the zucchini. I placed them like pepperoni for spacing and because I thought it was fun. I do the same thing with cherry tomatoes on margherita pizzas.
Next, I dug through the sautéed mushrooms, bell pepper strips, and onion. I tried to place them evenly across the pizza. The tomatoes finished the layer.
Last, I was happy to see that Katie put the cheese on top, so that we could really see it become golden brown under the broiler. I finished by topping it with some finely chopped basil.
To bake the pizza, I placed it on the grill at about 575 degrees. Katie suggests leaving the grill open to keep an eye on the pizza, but so much of the heat escaped, and I was worried that the top would not cook properly. So I set my timer for 5 minutes, close it, stayed nearby, and checked it periodically.
The pizza started to blister a bit, but again a little piercing here and there seemed to clear it up. I had to do it again one more time before it was done.
As the pizza sat on the grill, I could see the dough was cooking. I was not so sure about the top. So thankfully, after 5 minutes, I removed the pizza from the grill and brought it inside and turned on the broiler for a couple of minutes.
It was done before I knew it and boy did it look amazing. The broiler gave it so much more character. I was really happy with the end result.
But how would it taste?
CONCLUSION
The crust was crisp, with an audible crunch on the first bite. The edges were soft and springy. And it tasted like good bakery bread (not cheap toast like I feared). The grill nicely charred the bottom, giving the taste of a woodfire oven.
The toppings blended together to make robust flavor combinations: especially mushroom, bell pepper, and onion. The tomatoes were nice little bursts of juicy goodness. Unfortunately, I didn’t really notice the zucchini, even when I was being intentional. I had no problems with soggy ingredients.
Finally, the fresh mozzarella and feta enhanced the flavor of the toppings and added a nice texture and saltiness.
This pizza was a lot of fun to eat. The flavors were balanced, the textures were great, and it even looked like a delicious pizza.
Well done, Katie! Thanks for sharing your Supreme Vegetarian Pizza recipe.
Folks, please be sure to check out her site soon. Plus don’t forget to share your experience with this recipe and some cool things that you discovered!