Grilled Pizza with Za’atar, Tomatoes & Fresh Mozzarella
Sep 05, 2013, Updated May 01, 2023
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This is za’atar flatbread taken to another level! Grilled pizza with za’atar, tomatoes and fresh mozzarella is a great summer appetizer, or make it in the oven anytime on a hot stone.
There are many great things about living Up North; the natural beauty, the tranquility. Among those great things, something important is missing. Something called Great Pizza. We just donโt have it, even across the bay in the big metropolis of Petoskey where a clay oven awaits greatness in one of the restaurants, one finds nothing there but disappointment.
I donโt want a cracker for my pizza, which is what they want to serve. And I donโt want a doughy, watery tasting chew. I want something in between. I feel like begging Greg at our incredibly good bakery, Crooked Tree Breadworks, to start in with the pizza.
I may not have experienced much in the way of neighborliness in Chicago, but the pizza makes up for it. I hunt down the thin crusted Neapolitan pizzas there, having had one too many slices of lukewarm office-lunch deep dish or worse, cheese-stuffed (Peg and I have a sign of hand to throat with a deep glotteral sound just for this pizza; it means: too, too much).
Even when I lived in San Francisco, one of my favorite me-treats was to slip around the corner for my own pizza at the Delfina outpost on California Street (and if I was going big, Iโd have the sundae with Amarena cherries on top).
Of course, stellar pizza is all over the place in Roma. When I was there with my family years ago, I had some of the finest pizza of my life at the Vatican cafeteria. A plum plucked from the cafeteria shelf in a little white bowl still lingers in my mind as the best plum Iโve ever eaten. Perhaps we were just worn down by the tremendous walk they force you take through the entire museum before you can see the Sistene Chapel, and my papa was none too pleased, asking–no, demanding–the security people to let him the hell out. He was using some kind of Arabic-Italian accent when he spoke, which made us all laugh hard.
This moment commands my deepest respect for my father because he was gravely, deathly ill and we did not know it, he did not know it. Just knew he didnโt feel well one bit and needed to sit down immediately. But still his humor was willfully intact. Itโs one of those gifts of life he gave that I carry with me as a how-to totem: try hard not to lose your humor.
Perhaps even better than the Vatican pizza was the pizza we ate, most of our whole clan, standing in line at the Accedemia outside to see Michelangeloโs David. All of that waiting in line over there works up a good appetite, and time to eat if you send the sisters off to find the pizza that looked so good at a corner pizzeria we passed walking the cobbled Roman streets on the way there. The David was a knock-out, but so was that pizza.
Lebanese manโoushe, wildly popular in Lebanon for breakfast and all day long, is, it hit me recently (and not before now and I donโt know why), pizza. Because pizza is flatbread and manโoushe is flatbread and we are all crazy for it, everywhere. Especially topped with cheese. Thereโs a new spot in New York called Manousheh NYC thatโs going to cause a sensation, I just know it, over our version of pizza.
Now, there is a lot, a LOT to do with pizza dough the world over. Weโre talking type of yeast, time and temperature as the most important ingredients, fine Italian 00 flour, all of that. I think I need a deep winterโs solitary week Up North to dive equally deep into that kind of exploration. For now, I want my flatbread, my pizza, my manโoushe the same way I want my zaโatar flatbread: badly. In fact, I want zaโatar on it, such a natural with the cheese and fresh tomatoes.
I made a whole line-up of grilled pizzas (15? 20?) for the family back in July, using what turned out to be a nearly unworkable droopy dough that did taste, though, delicious. The best of those pizzas for me were the ones without tomato sauce, just oil and cheese and perhaps some marcona almonds and arugula.
Iโve been wanting that grilled delightโor just any good pizzaโagain (and again). Now in the sane confine of just a couple of us here, I can use the manโoushe dough that produces such a wonderful crust by combining regular flour with cake flour, and the fresh little Roma tomatoes that are intensely flavored of summer. Fresh mozzarella, and a healthy sprinkle of my zaโatar to bring the trifecta of favorite flavors together, and itโs as though weโre somewhere else eating what doesnโt seem possible at home, but it is, it is.
Grilled Za’atar Pizza
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 cup cake flour
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (90-100 degrees)
- 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon canola or grapeseed oil
- 1/2 cup za'atar
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 4 Roma tomatoes, sliced crosswise1/8-inch
- 2 large balls fresh mozzarella, sliced or crumbled
Instructions
- In a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, combine the flours and salt. Whisk together if making by hand; pulse a few times if using the processor.
- Proof the yeast in a small bowl. Mix the yeast and sugar together, then slowly add ยผ cup of thelukewarm water while stirring to combine. Set aside for 15 minutes until the yeast is foamy.
- Add the yeast mixture and the tablespoon of oil to the flour mixture. Mixing by hand, or with the food processor running, slowly pour in the remaining cup of warm water. Mix until combined and knead, if by hand, for 10 minutes until the dough is soft and elastic. If using the processor, run for a full minute after the water is added. The dough will form a ball and turn in the bowl as the machine runs.
- Set the dough to rise by placing the dough in a bowl that is completely but lightly oiled, and turn the dough so it is entirely coated with oil too. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and then a kitchen towel and place in a warm spot until doubled in size, 1 ยฝ-2 hours.
- Gently remove the dough from the bowl and divide into four evenly sized balls. Set the balls on a lightly floured surface and coat lightly with more flour. Cover with the plastic wrap and kitchen towel and rise for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat the grill with the pizza stone, top closed, at high heat.If using the oven, place the baking stone in the bottom of the oven. Remove the racks or line them at the top of the oven. Heat the oven to 400 degrees for20-30 minutes. Convection baking is ideal here, if possible. If youโre using convection, set the oven temperature to 425 degrees.
- Roll out the dough: lightly flour the work surface, the rolling pin, and the peel (or another overturned sheet pan to be used as a peel like a huge spatula). The flour acts as ball bearings for the dough to keep it from sticking to surfaces. Place one ball of dough on the floured surface and press down on it with the palm of your hand. The key to getting the dough rolled flat and round is to keep it moving, which means turning it frequently throughout the rolling process and adding more flour lightly to the work surface as yougo. Roll the dough from the center of the circle to the edge a couple of times,then rotate it, and roll again, repeating until the dough is round and ยผ -inch thick. If you like a thicker pizza, roll to ยฝ-inch thick.
- Coat the pizza peel liberally with flour. Gently transfer the rolled dough to the peel before adding the toppings. Brush the entire surface of the dough with olive oil. Mix all but a couple of teaspoons of the za'atar with all but a couple of teaspoons of the oil. Spread this mixture over the dough using the back of a spoon or your fingers, leave a ยฝ -inch rim around the edge. Top with tomato slices and mozzarella. Coat the perimeter of the dough with the remaining olive oil and dust the top of the pizza with the remaining za'atar. Slide the peel under the dough, using two hands (to avoid misshaping the round) to pull the dough onto the floured peel. Place on the baking stone and grill (or bake) 5-7 minutes, or until the bottom of the crust is golden and the top is bubbly and golden.
- Repeat the process with each of the four balls of dough.
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Maureen, I recently made your Grilled Pizza with Za’atar, Tomato, & Fresh Mozzarella. It was delicious! However, I found the instructions in the last paragraph of the recipe confusing. I.e., How can you spread the za’atar-oil mixture on the dough after the previous layers of oil, Zaโatar, tomatoes, and mozzarella are already on the dough? I just guessed that that layers were to be za’atar-oil mixture, sliced tomatoes, and mozzarella and omitted doing the previous two sentences. Please clarify the instructions.
PS – your pizza dough is much easier to handle and roll out or stretch than any recipe I have tried!
Thanks so much for your comment Elizabeth! Instructions clarified–much appreciated!
Hi Maureen,
I recently discovered – and am enjoying – your blog…it’s warm and cozy and hits the sweet spot in my soul. I’m hoping you might give me just a bit more info about your grilling technique for this pizza: Do you use wood, propane, charcoal? Do you use an actual pizza stone, or is it more of a metal/cast iron plancha-like surface (as it sort of appears in one of your photos)? Have you ever needed to add a bit of cornmeal to the flour on your peel? So far, that’s the only way i’ve been able to get a thin dough to slide smoothly off the peel and onto a stone, but maybe that’s just my lack of practice. Many thanks, in advance!
~ Tracey
Hi Tracey! Such kind and thoughtful words…thank you! I use a gas grill (how I’d love wood though!), and my stone is just that, a pizza stone. The cornmeal can be helpful; I always keep the dough moving on the peel by shaking it frequently as I put toppings on, etc., so it doesn’t get too comfy and stick. I also have used rice flour in the past and that works very well too, without imparting a flavor.
I appreciate your tips…hope you enjoy all that this day offers : ).
That looks delicious!
There seems to be something wrong with me. I don’t like pizza and I don’t like
za’atar. ๐
Beautiful! Thanks for the cake flour tip. I will certainly try this next time. Living where I do, like you, it is so difficult to find really good pizza. A recipe like yours is golden.Thanks again!
Maureen, We do make great pizza at Crooked Tree Breadworks, but you have to work here to get it. We celebrate employee birthdays with pizza. I call it the CTB benefits package.
When can I start?!
Maureen, Thanks for this recipe. I plan to make a gluten free version…Talk about branching out=)
Please let me know how it goes gluten-free, Linda!