Grilled Veggie Pizza

Grilled Veggie Pizza for July 4th with Red Star Yeast

Grilled pizza is a favorite summer pastime for us; we have spent many hot summer days making everything from Pesto Pizza to Breakfast Pizzas. Today we want to share one of our favorite pizzas with you: Grilled Pizza with Summer Veggies. We keep our crust crisp by grilling one side, flipping it, and then adding just enough fresh veggies and cheese. Eating a slice of warm, grilled pizza is truly magical.

Below you will find our directions to making pizza on the gas grill. Please note that we do call for a baking stone in our recipe, but you can attempt this right on the grates if you don’t have one (but a baking stone does make things a little easier). If you only have a charcoal grill, we have a post here on how to use that.

If you head to our Breadin5 Instagram page, you can watch our reels and see us make the pizza on the grill! 

(Need a refresher on grilling pizzas? Check out all our tips and tricks here.)

Grilled Veggie Pizza

Pizza Dough

3 cups lukewarm water
1/8 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon granulated yeast
1 tablespoon sugar or honey
1 tablespoon kosher salt
7 cups bread flour

Ingredients for finishing

1/3 cup pizza sauce

1/2 cup of bell peppers (we used a mixture of green, red, and yellow), sliced thin

1/4 cup yellow onion, sliced thin

1/4 cup mushrooms, sliced thin

3/4 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

For the dough

Combine the warm water, olive oil, yeast, sugar, and salt in a 5-quart bowl; preferably, in a lidded (not airtight) plastic container or food-grade bucket. Mix until all of the flour is incorporated using a stand mixer or dough whisk. Cover, and allow to rise at room temperature for 2 hours. You can use the dough right away, or refrigerate it for up to 14 days.

To Grill the Pizza
Heat your gas grill: Place a baking stone on the primary burners. Turn all burners to high and let heat up for 20 minutes. After they have heated, turn the side without the stone down to low heat.

While your grill is heating, pull out a 10 ounce piece of dough from your bucket and quickly form it into a ball. Let it sit on the counter while you gather your toppings.

Roll the ball out into a 1/8-inch-thick round. If the ball is resisting just let it sit for about 5 minutes and it will relax and allow you to work with it.

Using a floured pizza peel, place the shaped pizza dough over the pizza stone. Let it cook there until the top starts to bubble and the bottom creates a char to your liking. Remove the pizza from the grill and place on a nearby work surface. Making sure the charred-side is up, top your pizza: cover the pizza with sauce, veggies, and then the cheese.

Then, using your pizza peel, bring the pizza back to the grill, and finish cooking. Place over the hot side again, keeping a very careful watch. As soon as your char-marks look great, slide the pizza over to the cool side and cover the grill. Let cook for 4 to 10 minutes, until the cheese has melted. Remove the pizza from the grill, move to a wire rack, and let cool for a minute or two. Slice into pieces and serve.

Tip: If your pizza cheese won’t brown on the grill, you can use a kitchen torch to give it some color.

Note: Red Star Yeast provided yeast samples for recipe testing, and sponsors BreadIn5’s website and other promotional activities. This website is reader-supported; BreadIn5, LLC earns affiliate commissions when buying products through links on this website.

Taco Pizza

Sheet Pan Taco Pizza for Super Bowl Sunday

Throughout college, many weekends were spent eating pizza. This was for several reasons: pizza was delicious, and affordable, but most importantly, my boyfriend delivered pizza. This made pizza often free, which was better than affordable and even better than delicious. One particular pizza his pizza-chain made was “taco” pizza: a very American take on the taco, with tomato sauce and cheddar cheese, and then topped with shredded lettuce and fresh tomatoes. It was my favorite; somehow the fresh lettuce and tomato on top complimented the crust and melty cheese underneath perfectly.

I decided to recreate this pizza in sheet pan form, just in time for Super Bowl Sunday. I was feeling nostalgic for taco pizza, and this pizza also reminded me of the famous taco dip my mom would make for any and all events – layers of sour cream, cheese, lettuce, and black olives. This pizza has some of that, plus a delicious, thick crust and melted cheese. Our version here is very American and also pretty Midwestern (my family always opted for no spices and beans in both pizza and dip form), but I have listed in the recipe ways you can bring more flavor to your pizza if desired.

Taco Sheet Pan Pizza

from Artisan Pizza and Flatbreads in Five Minutes A Day

A few notes: The second layer of tomato sauce can be replaced with salsa, if you would like your pizza with a little more kick. Refried beans can also be added to the pizza along with the ground beef (or in place of it). You can replace the mozzarella and cheddar with Monterey Jack and/or Colby (just make sure you replace them with a cheese that melts well).

3 cups lukewarm water
1/8 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon yeast
1 tablespoon sugar or honey
1 tablespoon kosher salt
7 cups bread flour

Ingredients for finishing
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 cup tomato sauce

1 pound ground beef, cooked with your favorite taco seasoning (drain the grease from the meat before topping pizza)
2 cups grated mozzarella

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

2 cups shredded lettuce

chopped fresh tomatoes, black olives, sour cream, jalapeños, guacamole, etc

For the dough
Combine the warm water, olive oil, yeast, sugar, and salt in a 5-quart bowl; preferably, in a lidded (not airtight) plastic container or food-grade bucket. Mix until all of the flour is incorporated using a stand mixer or dough whisk. Cover, and allow to rise at room temperature for 2 hours. You can use the dough right away, or refrigerate it for up to 14 days.

Remove 2 pounds of dough from your dough bucket, and place it on a generously floured surface (for a thinner crust, use 1 1/2 pounds). Knead the dough a few times, and shape into a ball. Cover with a tea towel and let rest on the counter for 15-20 minutes.

Put your stone or pizza steel on the middle rack in your oven, and preheat the oven to 500, letting the oven preheat for a good 45 minutes. Spread 4 tablespoons of olive oil on a half sheet pan, making sure to oil the inside rim. Gently stretch the dough into a rectangular shape, and lay the dough onto the pan. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil on top of the dough, and use your fingers to work the dough evenly so it covers the pan (if the dough begins to resist, let it rest for 10 minutes and try again).

After the dough has rested, work it again as best you can so it evenly covers the pan. Let it rest for 30 minutes while the oven is preheating.

Spread 3/4 cup of tomato sauce evenly over the pizza. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes, until the edges of the crust are light golden, and the sauce starts to caramelize around the edges. The bottom of the crust should also be light golden brown and crisp.

Remove the pan from the oven. Carefully spread another 1/2 cup of tomato sauce (or salsa!) over the pizza, then top with the ground beef.

Cover with the grated cheeses, and carefully put the hot sheet pan back on the stone. Bake again for 10 to 15 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden brown underneath.

Cover the pizza with shredded lettuce, fresh tomatoes, olives, and whatever other ingredients your heart desires. Serving guacamole and sour cream on the side is a nice idea.

Enjoy! We hope your team wins!

Note: BreadIn5.com is reader supported–when you buy through links on the site, BreadIn5 LLC earns commissions.

sourdough pizza

Sourdough Pizza

Making sourdough is a favorite pastime for many, but within the last few weeks thousands more have joined the club, as yeast is suddenly hard to find on the grocery store shelves. We here at Breadin5 have been making sourdough for years, and while we have a post on our Easy Sourdough Starter, we realized there are many more things to make with our no-knead bread method. We had some requests for a sourdough pizza crust, and we are delivering (pun intended).

We know that flour is also scarce, and the bread flour called for below may not be available to you right now. Since different types of flours have different protein levels (and this of course effects the recipe), we have included a video on mixing flour and adding more water if necessary. If you need help finding flour, good places to look are local bakeries (they sometimes will sell flour to customers), and restaurant supply stores.

Sourdough Pizza

Note: You’re going to need a sourdough starter. If you haven’t started one yet, please check out our post for Easy Sourdough Starter. Our method uses whole wheat flour, but I used bread flour (same proportions) in mine for the pizza.

Flour has different protein contents depending on the type and brand, which can effect how much water to use. If you mix your dough and it seems dry, more water can be added. We have included a video below so you can see how your dough should look, and add water accordingly.

We have instructions in our Healthy Bread in Five Book for ‘semi’ sourdough – using some of the starter along with yeast to give a milder sourdough flavor. Check out page 390 for details.

Extra dough can be portioned into 10-ounce balls and frozen, if desired. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap, and then place in a freezer safe bag. Dough can be pulled out the night before using and thawed in the refrigerator overnight.

If you need extra help rolling out pizza dough and transporting it to the oven, there’s more on that in the video.

2 cups lukewarm water (see note above)

3 cups activated levain (sourdough starter)

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/8 cup olive oil

6 cups [840 g] bread flour

Mix the water, activated levain, salt, sugar, and olive oil together in 5-quart container or the bowl of a stand mixer.

Mix in the flour with a Danish dough whisk or a heavy duty stand mixer. Cover (not airtight) and allow it to rest at room temperature until the dough rises, two hours or more (sourdough can take a lot longer to rise than commercial yeast. I let mine rise for 4 hours at room temperature, then moved it to the fridge overnight, where it continued to do a slow rise).

If your dough looks dry (which may happen depending on what type of flour you are using) you can add more water. Here’s how your dough should look– see the video below:

The dough can be used immediately after it’s initial rise, though it is easier to handle when cold. Refrigerate it in a lidded (not airtight) container and use for pizza over the next few days.

Preheat a baking stone at your oven’s highest temperature for at least 30 minutes. Sprinkle a pizza peel liberally with flour. Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 10-ounce piece. Dust it with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go. Cover the dough with a piece of plastic wrap or kitchen towel, and let rest for 20 minutes.

Flatten the dough with your hands and/or a rolling pin on a work surface, or directly onto a wooden pizza peel, to produce a 1/8-inch thick round. (You can also put it on a piece of parchment paper for ease. Note that your crust won’t brown as nicely if doing so! Parchment is shown in the photos below because I needed to move the pizza around to take photos. Also, my kids prefer a lighter crust. But if you want a dark crust, use a pizza peel.) Dust with flour to keep the dough from adhering to the surface. Use a dough scraper to unstick the dough as needed, and transfer to a pizza peel if you haven’t stretched the dough out on one already. When you’re finished, the dough round should have enough flour under it to move easily when you shake the peel.

Add toppings to your pizza (I kept mine simple: sauce and cheese, with a scattering of basil leaves after the pizza emerged from the oven). Slide the pizza onto the preheated stone. Check for doneness in 8 to 10 minutes, and turn the pizza around in the oven if one side is browning faster than the other. I took my pizza out earlier for a lighter crust (my kids’ preference), but you can take your crust as dark as you like.

Allow to cool slightly, preferably on a wire cooling rack. Cut into wedges and serve.

Here’s another video for rolling out the pizza dough here (you can find the full video on Instagram):

You can also do cracker-crust pizza with this dough, or any of our lean doughs.

Fresh Tomato Pizza

Tomato Pizza | Breadin5 photo by Zoë François

Labor day is a turning point; when we switch our thinking from picnics to packed school lunches. But, it is also the time when the summer fruits are busting out their last hurrah and the tomatoes are in their peak glory. This tomato pizza is an ode to my dad’s garden and the bounty of tomatoes and squash that he grew. He is a magnificent gardener and this pizza needed nothing more than olive oil, a dash of salt and fresh herbs to be magnificent. I threw on a bit of mozzarella to satisfy the children.

I made the pizza dough from Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day, using bread flour from a local miller, Bakersfield Flour and Bread, but you can use all-purpose or bread flour that you have on hand. It is fun to experiment with all kinds of flours and pizza dough is just the place, since it is so forgiving. You can watch me toss this dough in the air (there is a cameo appearance by my poodle, Miles) in our @breadin5 Instagram video.

tomato pizza | Breadin5 photo by Zoë Francois Read More

Grilled Breakfast Pizza Two Ways

Grilled Breakfast Pizza Recipe | Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

We’ve had some incredibly warm days here in Minneapolis (scorchers, as we like to call them, as in ‘what a scorcher!’) so our grill has been in constant use. Grilling during extremely hot weather isn’t always the best idea, because, well, that grill is hot, but it does keep the house much cooler. I decided on one of these raging hot mornings that I would start grilling early – friends were coming over for a late breakfast, and maybe we could just do pizzas? With breakfast toppings? Everyone was amused by the idea of breakfast pizza, and now my kids request it daily. We made two different kinds: eggs, bacon, and Swiss chard with a roasted garlic sauce, and peach-sausage-basil with mozzarella. Both were considered hits by all.

Grilled Breakfast Pizza Recipe | Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

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Deep Dish Pizza

Deep Dish Pizza

Deep dish pizza is a favorite meal around my house, but I often forget to add it to our weekday meal plan. This week, however, I was ahead of the game, and planned for deep dish pizza night. No-knead cornmeal olive oil dough makes this almost too simple, and the thick pizza slices filled with sausage and cheese meant one piece each was enough for all of us. Of course, it’s been requested again, and next week I think I’ll stuff it full of onions, green pepper, and mushrooms, for a vegetarian take.

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Cracker-crust pizza: you’ll need this French dowel rolling pin giveaway WINNERS HAVE BEEN CHOSEN

Cracker-crust pizza is so thin the light shines through it

This pizza is so thin and crackly that light shines through it!  It’s much easier to achieve perfection with this Tuscan specialty than you might think. You will need a good rolling pin, and the good folks at JK Adams in Vermont have a terrific French dowel rolling pin that we like (especially the thinner 1 1/2″ model), and they’re providing five of them  to give away in a drawing here. We prefer these tapered handle-less pins to the handled straight rollered versions–seems that you get better control of thinly-rolled items… Read More

Five Rules for Making Great Grilled Pizza Outdoors on the 4th of July, With Red Star Platinum Yeast: NEW VIDEO!

artisan bread in five pizza on the grill

Getting a perfect result with homemade pizza on the gas grill in the summertime is easy–you just need to mix up some lean dough from any of our books–we’ve been testing with Red Star Platinum Yeast–with fantastic results (today’s dough was the light whole wheat, but you can use any of our lean doughs)…

Platinum Yeast | Breadin5

… and follow a few simple rules from Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day

artisan bread in five pizza on the grill

1.  Clean the grill’s grates
2.  Get your dough thin, to 1/8 of an inch thick
3.  Bake the first side of the crust “blind” (without toppings) for about three minutes, then flip and top. Prep all your toppings in advance.
4.  Cut the cheese into small cubes, or grate it so it melts fast, before the bottom crust burns. That way, after flipping and topping, the pizza will be finished in five to ten minutes, depending on burner heat and position under the pizza.
5.  Don’t overload with toppings

grilled pizza from artisan bread in five

Here’s a video on how to do it: (includes demo of pizza dough-throwing technique):

Pizza on a Baking Steel

pizza | Breadin5

After a year of our readers recommending the Baking Steel, I’ve finally given it a try. It is a little surprizing that this hadn’t happened earlier, since I have every other baking surface ever created. As you know, if you read my review of baking stones, I love my Lodge cast iron baking “stone,” but it isn’t perfect. The round shape makes it a bit hard to make baguettes and the lip around the edge makes it tough to clean. The handles on the Lodge are convenient for getting it in and out of the oven, but it means I can’t lay a baking sheet on top of it, so I have to take it out of the oven before baking anything on a baking sheet. None of those things prevented me from using it constantly, until I got the Baking Steel. The shape of the steel is more conducive to baking beyond just pizza and there is no lip or handles to work around. Just like the cast iron, the Baking Steel is virtually indestructible, heats up a bit quicker and conducts heat really well. In fact, I think the steel is the best heat conductor of any of my “stones.” The Baking Steel is a bit more expensive than my other stones. Is it worth it? For me, yes. The shape and heating properties make it worth the extra money, and I’ll use it daily and so it’s worth the investment. The fact that I don’t have to worry about it ever breaking (even on the grill) is a comfort as well.

baking steel | Breadin5

The dimensions of the baking steel 14×16 inches.

If you’d like a chance to win a Baking Steel with carrying case and a copy of our book, Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day please leave a comment below about your favorite pizza. (The package is only available to be shipped in the USA and subject to all our regular contest rules.)This giveaway is over! Read More

Mushroom Garlic Thyme Stovetop Pizza

mushroom garlic thyme stovetop pizza | bread in 5

Pizza for dinner is always a favorite around my house, and while I’ve tried it every which way: classic margherita, deep dish, hand tossed, and grilled, it had been awhile since I’ve made a stovetop version. Our Artisan Pizza and Flatbreads in Five Minutes A Day book has a great recipe for pizza made in a cast iron skillet, and after making it quite often this past week I remembered how easy and tasty this method is. It’s perfect for dinner, but especially for lunch; pizza is ready quickly without even turning on the oven.

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