Duck and Morel Thin Crust Pilsner Pizza
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A popular dish around my house are these handmade pizza's that my wife Tami makes. She'll make her own dough, and usually has plenty of it saved in the freezer, ready to go on demand. One Halloween, all the kids came over for a pumpkin designing, personal pizza making party. The kids each got to design their own pumpkins and create their own personal pizzas with any toppings they wanted. I created mine to look like a pumpkin patch with cheese covered with Arugula leaves and small Habanero's, that resembled pumpkins. Although mine wasn't exactly edible, unless of course you wanted your face melted off, I'm pretty sure I won the best Pizza and Pumpkin award, even though they told me it wasn't a contest. Anyway, we've been making these homemade pizzas for years now, sometimes in the oven, sometimes outside on the grill. When she cooks them on the grill, she'll brush the pizza crust of olive oil and sit it right on the hot grill, with no toppings on it. Cooking it for a few minutes to kind of set the dough, so it's stiff enough to work with, otherwise the dough would be to limp making it difficult to get your dough, loaded with topping on the grill, unless you had a pizza peel, but we don't have one.. yet, so this is our method. Once the dough firms up, she'll remove it from the grill and add the toppings to the pizza, before setting it back on the grill to cook for a few more minutes to melt the cheeses and finish it up. The kids love these pizzas and I've seen her do it enough, I thought I'd attempt to create my own.
For this recipe, I thought about what goes great with Pizza? Beer, of course!! I've been making a medieval style loaf of beer bread for a long time so, I thought why not try to make a beer-based pizza crust? It turned out great, I think. Make sure you leave your beer out of refrigerator long enough for it to reach room temperature before adding it to the yeast. The yeast won't activate in the cold beer, they like it warm. There should be enough dough here to make one large pizza or two small pizzas. The dough should be pliable but supple enough to work with. I like to lay my dough out on a well-floured surface and work it into the shape I want with a rolling pin and my hands. I haven't mastered the art of throwing the dough in the air to make that perfectly round pizza, so you'll see that my pizza is more squarish then round. While my wife makes it look easy, getting your pizza dough in the shape that you want can be frustrating, at least for me. I worked with one piece of dough for several minutes before getting frustrated enough to blame the dough and start over with a different batch ... only to have one the teenagers in the house come over and form my reject pile into a perfectly round shaped pizza. The shape of your pizza shouldn't really matter, as long as it tastes good, right?
Ive made this a couple of times at the house and Ive never been disappointed. Sometimes I use different types of Mushrooms and will add different cheeses. Just make sure you put down plenty of Mozzarella, cause it just isnt pizza without it.
Ingredients
Pilsner Pizza dough
Duck and Morrell Pizza
Instructions
Pilsner Pizza dough
Step #1 To make dough. Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
Step #2 Create a small well in the center of your flour, pour in Honey, Olive Oil and Warm Beer, then use a spatula to combine all the ingredients. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, you can use that instead.
Step #3 When you have everything incorporated together, dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and kneaded with your hands for around 5 minutes, until the dough starts to push back.
Step #4 Form your dough into a ball and place in a large bowl coated with Olive Oil. Allow to rest for a couple of hours. I like to microwaved a damp towel for a few minutes then drape it over the bowl. Be careful if you do this, because the steam from the hot towel can burn your skin. During this time, the dough should just about double in size.
Step #5 After about two hours, punch the dough down with your hands and place it back in the bowl to rest for another hour. At this point I like to drizzle the top of the dough with Olive Oil.
Step #6 Divide the dough in half if you want to make two small pizzas or leave whole if you want to make one large pizza. Take enough plastic wrap and place it on the table. Dump your dough ball into the center of the plastic wrap, fold up and place in the refrigerator overnight.
Duck and Morel Thin Crust Pizza
Step #1 Remove the Pizza Dough and Duck Breast from the refrigerator and allowing them to reach room temperature while you work on the other ingredients.
Step #2 Re-hydrate the Dried Morel Mushrooms in 2 cups of Chicken Stock ( or water ) for about an hour.
Step #3 Slice up the Garlic Cloves and add them to a bowl. Pour in 4 tablespoons of Olive Oil and allow to marinade for about an hour. This will create an Garlic Infused Oil we'll use to brush on the crust.
Step #4 Score the skin of the Duck Breast with a knife, ensuring only to make shallow cuts to the top layer of skin. Season the Breast meat generously with salt and pepper on both sides.
Step #5 Add to a cold pan, skin side down, then turn the heat to medium. Dont forget to salt and pepper both sides of the duck.
Step #6 Cook for around 6-8 minutes on skin side, then flip and cook the other side for another 3-4 minutes.
Step #7 Remove the Duck from the hot pan with the internal temperature reaches around 135 for medium rare, 145 for medium and 155 for medium well.
Step #8 Allow to rest 10 to 15 minutes. Then shred meat.
Step #9 While the Duck is resting, dump the pizza dough out onto a well-floured surface. Using your hands, or roller pin, form your pizza crust into your desired shape. Make it round, square, whatever shape you want. I cut my dough in half, there's enough dough here to make two small thin crust pizza or one large thick crust pizza.
Step #10 Once you have it the size and shape that you want it, brush the whole top side of the crust with the Garlic infused Olive Oil.
Step #11 Take a baking sheet / pizza sheet and cover it with some yellow corn meal, then take the pizza crust and place it on the baking sheet, oiled side down. The corn meal will help flavor the crust and ensure that the dough doesn't stick to the baking sheet, if you're cooking your pizza in the oven.
Step #12 I'm cooking my pizza on a gas grill, but if you want to cook yours in the oven, preheat it to 450 degrees and skip the rest of this step, otherwise, turn grill on high heat. Allow to get hot, then turn down to low. Remove your Pizza Crust from baking sheet and place directly on the grill grates, with no toppings, oiled side down. Brush the top the pizza crust with the Garlic infused Olive Oil. We only want this on the grill for a few minutes, just long enough to set the dough. We aren't trying to cook the dough, just make it stiff enough to work with. Once the crust looks semi stiff, remove it from the grill.
Step #13 Now is time to started topping your pizza. Drizzle the Garlic infused Olive Oil all over the crust but reserve the slices of Garlic. Generously coat the Pizza Crust with shredded Mozzarella Cheese. Optionally add a second type of cheese like Pecorino Romano. Add shredded Duck Breast Meat, sliced re-hydrated Morel Mushrooms, reserved Garlic slices, Salt, Pepper and Red Pepper Flakes.
Step #14 Once you have all the topping on it you want. Place it back on the hot grill for a few more minutes, until the cheese is all melted and the crust starts to brown. If you want to cook it in the oven, once the oven is preheated, bake for about 15 minutes.
Step #15 Once your pizza is done cooking, add some chopped Arugula to the top and serve with a cold beer.
Recipe Card
Duck and Morel Thin Crust Pilsner Pizza
Ingredients
Pilsner Pizza dough
Duck and Morrell Pizza
Instructions
Pilsner Pizza dough
Duck and Morel Thin Crust Pizza
About the Author
Jeff Davis
Visit authors websiteYou may think cooking and recipes don’t have much to do with a website dedicated to hunting dogs ... but really, why do we hunt? Sure, we enjoy watching our dogs work in the field and being outdoors, but ultimately, hunting is about survival and feeding our families. We might as well try to do it well. I'm not a chef and definitely no food authority ... but I do like to eat and enjoy cooking. After searching for people willing to share their recipes on Gundog Central, without much success, I decided to try to do a few on my own, with my wife Tami's help. The recipes I share here are things I like to eat and have made here at home. I've tried to include step-by-step instructions with each meal describing exactly how I did it, but my method may not be best, if you decide to try a recipe posted here, please use whatever technique you think works best, I'm simply sharing how I did it. You'll see a lot of recipes where I've tried to make things from starch, when I could have just used store bought ingredients, simply because I wanted to learn how something was done. My goal is to continually update these recipes as I learn new things and techniques. These are my attempts at creating good, home cooked food, that I would like to eat! If I'm sharing it here, my family and I enjoyed it and I believe you will too.
