Review - Grilled Pizza The Right Way

Title: Grilled Pizza the Right Way: The Best Technique for Cooking Incredible Tasting Pizza & Flatbread on Your Barbecue Perfectly Chewy & Crispy Every Time
Author: John Delpha
Price: $19.99

This is one of the three books I was sent to review back in April. It's been a little hectic lately with end of school and work so I haven't had a chance to review it until now.

The book is by John Delpha who is a former Army officer and Helicopter pilot. He became a chef and cooked in some of Bostons top kitchens such as Clio, Mistral, Harvest, Sorellina and La Campania. He is a member of iQue, who won the 2009 Jack Daniel's World Barbecue Championship and loves to cook with fire. He learned how to grill pizza at Al Forno in Providence, RI and brings his experience and skill to the masses via this book.

I love to use my grill and I love to eat pizza. This book is perfect for people with similar tastes. If you want to try something new on the grill this book will help you learn how to grill a pizza and other flatbreads. It starts with savory pizzas and ends with dessert pizzas. There are a couple parts I found a little confusing, but overall it is a pretty straight forward cook book.

Layout

The book is laid out in a progression of how you would put together a pizza. It starts with the basics and gets a little more complicated as you go. You learn how to make the dough, cook it correctly, make the sauce and cheese blends and build the whole pizza. As you can see from the contents John packs a lot in.

1. Learning Lessons, Basic Techniques and Equipment
2. The Classics
3. Meat Pizzas
4. Fruit of the Sea
5. Great Ways to Get your Veggies
6. the Masqueraders
7. Cross-Border Contenders
8. Brunch and Dessert Favorites
9. Flatbreads

The dough recipe is a good one but I had one issue with the instructions. It shows you step-by-step how to make the dough and you end up with a large ball of dough. The pictures that help guide you, show the dough being cut into smaller sizes for the pizzas, but the dough making instructions don't tell you that. I found those instructions on the page with "The Anything but Basic Tomato and Cheese Grilled Pizza." It's a little niggling thing but it would be nice if all those instructions were together, in fact "the Anything but Basic Tomato and Cheese Grilled Pizza" comes before any of the dough or sauce recipes. It seemed a little out of place.

The instructions for each pizza are straight forward and tell you exactly how to spread the dough, lay it on the grill, and make the pizza. 

The sauce recipe is simple and tasty but I found it a bit runny. I may have messed up the recipe, but I think the tomatoes need to be drained a little so it is thicker and less watery.

Cook

For the cook, I made the "Pizza Margherita" and one of my own creation. 

I made the dough per the instructions and cut it into four balls. I used two and froze two. 

Dough ready to go.

I oiled the pan and dough, and spread it out.

Ready to cook.

I set all my ingredients out so when the crust was ready I could laden it with the goods.

Cooking one side.

Ready for the toppings.

I topped it and put the pizza back on the grill. I discovered a pizza peel is a great thing to have when grilling pizza (I got one for fathers day so future pizzas will be easier). I didn't have one so I used a cookie sheet that didn't have a lip on it.

Cooking the toppings. 

The pizza was ready in no time and topped with fresh basil and a little balsamic vinegar. It was very good and will be made again.

Ready to eat. 

The second pizza was a roma tomato, mushroom, and red onion one.

Ready to slid eon the grill.

I used the same basic principles as I did cooking the previous one.

Ready to eat.

Both pizzas were delicious.

Conclusion

This is a really good cook book with some great recipes. After a little bit of confusion from the dough recipe it was smooth sailing. I plan to try many of the other pizzas in the book and my family looks forward to it. On the Gibbs Ribs Scale* I would have to give Grilled Pizza the Right Way a 3/4 rack of ribs with a side of slaw. It's close to a full rack but having to search for the information about cutting the dough is keeping it from a full rack. Maybe it will be fixed in future additions. Would I recommend getting this cook book? YES! Especially if you enjoy pizza and grilling.  

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.