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As warm weather arrives, I want to move my flatbread efforts out to the grill.  A hot, hot oven in the summer is no fun at all!  Two birthday presents this year included “Artisan Pizza in 5 Minutes a Day” and an Emile Henry Black Flame Top Grilling Stone, suitable for use out on the grill.

Stepping up the flatbread with a new book, moving the “oven” outdoors with a new pizza stone

We’ve been having so much fun with flatbread as a weekend lunch, expect to see a continuing saga this summer.  Here’s our first session outdoors.

I’ve been using the basic bread recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day as my everyday bread dough as well as the source of my flatbread crust.  I love this book, and I especially like that the authors are from the Twin Cities.  The recipe works great, no complaints.  I wanted to get some additional ideas for more crusts and especially for more topping approaches. The new book definitely delivers!

The real key to success with homemade pizza and flatbread is ingredient prep.  You need to spend the time to have all your ingredients chopped, sliced, or mixed before you roll out or toss your dough.

The key to flatbread success is ingredient prep

Today’s topping ingredient choices include (clockwise from top left) fresh sliced roma tomatoes with pesto mixed in, red onions, fresh basil, Shiitake mushrooms, Cremini mushrooms, home roasted red peppers, speck, and fresh mini asparagus spears.  Grated cheese is standing by, we have blue cheese, hard goat cheese, and a hard sheep’s milk cheese.  Julie and I each get to choose our own toppings for our individual flatbreads.

I rolled these crusts out, didn’t have time to try hand tossing.  We’ll see if we can try hand tossing the crusts in coming weeks.  I can’t wait!

Julie’s flatbread ready for the grill

Julie’s choices include the tomato/pesto mix, spec, both kinds of mushrooms, asparagus, and blue cheese. We both have been impressed with blue cheese as a pizza/flatbread topping!  You can see the cornmeal scattered on the pizza peel.  The cornmeal is key to getting the pizza crust to slide off the peel and onto the stone.

The pizza stone has room for a couple of pizzas

If you shape your crusts into a rectangle rather than round, you can easily fit two crusts on the stone at a time.  You need to heat the stone on the grill for 30 minutes before you cook your flatbreads.

Lunch is ready!

We topped our finished flatbreads with some spring mix greens.  If you top the flatbreads right away, the lettuce wilts just a bit.  What a beautiful topping for a hot flatbread!

Finished flatbread up close

My flatbread included the tomato/pesto mix, basil, both kinds of mushrooms, onions, speck, roasted peppers, and both the goat and sheep’s milk cheeses.  Asparagus is beautiful, but I have never learned to like it; I’ll leave it all for Julie.  As you can see from the close-up above, the flatbread crust didn’t brown quite as well as it did previously in the oven.  The pizza was cooked all the way and tasted great.  I’ll be experimenting in upcoming installments to see if I can figure out a good way to brown the top crust before the bottom crust begins to burn.

The color of a Rose’ can be really spectacular

The Bedrock Ode to Lulu Rose’ was our favorite Rose’ last summer.  This year’s version is another winner!  The grapes are mostly Mourvedre with a little Grenache.  They are picked early to retain that freshness and acidity.  The wine is a beautiful light salmon color.  The aroma is delicate and fresh.  The flavor is nice and bright, flavorful yet still lively and tart.  And dry, dry, dry.  It is so refreshing on a hot day!

Flatbread with a refreshing Rose’

Flatbreads dressed lightly as these are very different from your usual heavy pizza with toppings.  The flavors burst through and you won’t need a nap afterwards from all the cheese.  We have found that olives, roasted peppers, and charcuterie (like the speck) stand out as dominant flavors.  You can dress the flatbread with them pretty sparsely and still have them show up nicely in the overall flavor profile.

Summertime bliss

On a warm sunny day, a nice dry Rose’ partners nicely with the flatbread.  Neither one overpowers the other, just nice, fresh and very refreshing.

Bedrock Ode to Lulu Rose – a real favorite

One last look at the beautiful color of a nice Rose’ in the summer.