Pizza Margherita

Summer and the first ripe tomatoes means only one thing to me: time to get busy making fresh mozzarella! And mozzarella and ripe tomatoes means only two things: Insalata Caprese and Pizza Margherita! At home on a weekend when there is plenty of time to get some dough rising, it's pizza time for sure.

Grilled Pizza Margherita

A lot of people swear that a Margherita pizza must have red sauce on it. I'm not going to say that they are wrong, but merely misguided. I would rather have big slabs of ripe tomato on my pizza than sauce any day!

We ended up making these pizzas on Monday rather than Sunday as planned because apparently our yeast is a bit feeble and it took an extra day to get it going.

When grilling pizzas, I stretch the dough and spray the grill bars with pan spray. After two turns on the grill with the top closed, the crust is flipped and the bottom gets a single turn. Then I pull it out of the grill, three-quarters cooked, and put the ingredients on the top side, which has been fully cooked.

First, I drizzle olive oil on the crust, then sprinkle it with salt, then lay on the basil leaves. Over this goes the mozz and the tomatoes and another sprinkle of coarse salt. Back into the grill it goes with the lid closed until the mozz is melted. This is all best accomplished over medium heat. High heat cooks the bottom crust much more quickly than the top crust and the result is half-baked and half-baked is half-baked.

Sunday Sipping

This weekend was fairly temperate and we were able to sit outside a lot and that was a blessing after the blazing temperatures of June. This village-level Chablis from Albert Bichot (Domain Long-Depaquit) is a delicious Chardonnay and one of my favorites of the summer.