I don’t know about you but pizza in our house is an all time favorite! My family will eat almost any kind of pizza that’s how much we love it and this mushroom and herb pizza is no exception. Pizza is usually thought about with having a red sauce (and we do eat those all the time) but one of our favorite ways to make pizza is by using only olive oil as the sauce. It tastes so amazing this way!
If you going to be making your own pizza at home, you should also try making your own pizza dough. It is very easy and you can actually make a double batch and freeze half for another pizza night. If you are not feeling that adventurous then my advice would be to only use certain store bought pizza doughs. Definitely do not buy not the ones in the packages at the store. My favorite quick pizza dough purchase is from whole foods. You can go right to the section that they make the pizzas in the store and ask to buy the dough. Really easy!
Now, the other thing that makes this pizza taste so great (In my humble opinion) is the fact that it is cooked on the grill. When I say this I mean directly on the grill, no pan! It is the best way to get that pizza oven taste!
Once you give this a try you will see that you can make great pizza at home!
Mushroom and Herb Pizza
Ingredients
- 1 ball of pizza dough from scratch pizza or store bought
- 1 package of baby portabella mushrooms sliced
- 5 cloves of garlic finely chopped
- 1 cup of olive oil
- 2 cups of shredded Mozzarella cheese
- 1/2 cup of finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese
- 2 tbsp of fresh parsley finely chopped
- 2 tbsp of fresh basil finely chopped
- 1 tsp of salt
- 1 tsp of pepper
- flour for rolling out your pizza dough
Instructions
- Pizza dough:
- Take your pizza dough and divide it into 2 quarters with a large knife.
- Working one at a time on a lightly floured surface, roll out each pizza dough quarter until it is almost paper thin and place on a large platter making sure they do not overlap or else they will stick.
- You can also lay them down on some aluminum foil if you do not have a large enough platter. Just do not use parchment or wax paper or the dough will stick to them.
- Preparing the pizza
- Once you have rolled out all of your pizza dough start preparing all of your toppings by finely chopping your herbs and mincing your garlic.
- Mix together your shredded mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese and set aside.
- In a medium saute pan over medium heat, add 1 tbsp of your olive oil, a pinch of your minced garlic and your sliced mushrooms and saute for about 10 minutes or until the mushrooms begin to soften.
- Once the mushrooms are cooked, add a pinch of salt to the mushrooms and set aside.
- Once this is done, go ahead and preheat your grill on medium high heat.
- While your grill is preheating, you want to gather all of your ingredients together and make an easy pizza assembly area for yourself near the grill.
- Making your pizza:
- Once your grill is preheated drizzle or brush one side of your pizza dough with some of the olive oil making sure to cover all of your dough and place oil side down on the grill.
- Depending on the size of your grill, you may have to do 1 pizzas at a time.
- Now drizzle or brush the top sides of your dough with more olive oil.
- After the dough has been on the grill for 2-3 minutes, flip over your dough and begin cooking the other side.
- Once you have flipped over your pizza dough, go ahead and sprinkle on your garlic and a little salt and pepper.
- Now add about 1/4 of your cheese mixture to each pizza top then your herbs and mushrooms and close your lid.
- Cook for about 4-5 minutes making sure the bottoms of your dough are not getting to dark.
- Cook until the cheese is all melted and the crust and cheese are bubbling.
- Remove from the heat and slice your pizza with a pizza wheel or a large sharp knife.
- Enjoy!
Love the idea of using aged pizza dough as I used to have Friday pizza Night using part of the dough from the week before to cut down on commercial yeast . Now that we are empty nesters pizza is not as often. But I still keep a cup of dough refrigerated. This time it’s quite dark as it’s been maybe three weeks (forgot to freeze it after a week). What do you think. Still Good. I would say if it rises it’s good to use as it has no smell.
Thanks
Eve
Hi Eve. It sounds like air made contact with your dough when it was in the refrigerator? Graying can happen from this and as long as it is still “alive” (bounces back when poked) and doesn’t have a bad smell it should be ok. The grey part may give a bit of a different flavor to the dough. To avoid that you can just pick out the gray portions if possible. If all the dough is grey then it might not make great pizza dough. But, since you are using this as a starter it might work fine when adding it to fresh ingredients.
If you make sure you tightly wrap the dough and coat it in olive oil when storing this usually can be avoided. Sometimes it comes down to the flour quality (the ash content in flour being too high).
Hope this helps 🙂