Grilled Pizzas with Tomato, Avocado, and Pepper Jack Cheese

This rainy weather has squashed my motivation to drive to the coast (Arcata/Eureka) to do my usual large-scale grocery mission. Instead, we have made do with what we have around. I picked this recipe because we already had most of the ingredients, and I got lucky and found ripe avocados on sale at Rays Market in Willow Creek.

I pretty much screwed up on the first step—at least this was my theory. To make the cornmeal pizza dough, Martha instructs to dissolve the active dry yeast in warm water at a temperature of 110 degrees. I think my water was too hot (note to self: buy cooking thermometer) and I overcooked my yeast…preventing them from doing their yeasty thing (aka making the dough rise properly). My dough rose a bit, but I think it was supposed to have fluffed up more. I should have been more suspect of my own actions and made a new batch of warm water yeast mix before I added it to my flour and cornmeal. Instead, I continued course, which resulted in flat pizza dough that didn’t much rise in the oven.

There is another possibility, which is the oven itself. Martha instructs, “Heat a grill until medium hot. Generously brush one side of the pizza dough with oil; grill oiled side down, until underside is golden brown and the top begins to bubble, 3 to 5 minutes.” There is great mystery to me in this instruction. At first, I thought Martha was telling me to put my pizza dough directly on to my oven rack. This struck me as a very poor idea, resulting in visions of the Willow Creek Volunteer Fire Department (which is lacking sufficient numbers of volunteers) responding to our desperate 911 call after the oven bursts into flames. Then I realized she must not be talking about putting the pizza in the oven. She is telling me to heat a grill. I don’t have a grill, so how do I heat the grill until medium hot? If I did have a grill, which I don’t, what would it look like exactly? Is she talking about a BBQ? Am I supposed to BBQ the pizza? I quickly gave up on trying to decipher Martha-think and instead warmed the oven to 400 degrees and threw my crust on a cookie sheet (another note to self: buy pizza pans for oven), hoping for the best. I am still irritated Martha does not provide an oven method translation for those of us in the world who are grill-less. How was I supposed to know what temperature to use?

As previously mentioned, the dough didn’t really puff up much and was more like a flat bread, although it was tasty with the cornmeal and refreshing toppings of uncooked tomato, red onion, avocado and lime. I am glad I only did a half-recipe, knowing six 9-inch pizzas would be more than we could handle. As it is, we still have a ton of leftovers. Martha also should have mentioned not to top the pizza until you are ready to serve. Otherwise, the limey pizza topping makes the cheesy crust all soggy. No bueno.