Beer Crust Pizza Dough by Salt N Sear Catering

When I was gearing up to plan our wedding a while back (no, we still don’t have a new date set! LOL!) I was browsing through Instagram and searching for a local food catering company when I stumbled across Salt N Sear Catering’s IG account. First off, if you don’t follow them, stop what your doing and take a peek at their drool-worthy feed, you won’t regret it!

Each post I saw had me immediately craving what they were featuring. So, I had to reach out to see if they would be interested in taking over our blog in hopes they would be willing to share a fun and delicious recipe!

Today, Jean from Salt N Sear Catering is sharing all of the details on how to recreate their beer crust pizza dough recipe! You’ll want to bookmark this one … trust me!

About Salt N Sear Catering

Hi there! Chef Jean Jacques Kabuya here from Salt N Sear Catering. Salt N Sear is a family-owned and operated catering company out of Vancouver, BC. My beautiful wife, Janice, and I run the company together. While Janice and I, together, are the heart and soul of Salt N Sear, the inspiration for our company comes from my mother, and from everything she taught me about cooking.

I was born in Lusaka, Zambia and moved to Canada with my mother at the age of 5. My mom’s love of tasty food and cooking is what started me on the road to becoming a chef. I started helping her in the kitchen as soon as I could walk. She taught me how to cook and to keep our African traditions alive.

My mother brought our African tradition of shopping for fresh, local foods direct from the farm with her to Canada, and from an early age, she would bring me to the local farms every Saturday to search for the best produce she could find. She was often after what some in those days considered to be the inedible parts of plants, but these items were some of the best secrets to her cooking. Squash leaves are well known in the culinary industry now, but back then the local farmers would give them to my mom for free by the bushel full because they were considered waste. Another leaf she loved, that is a big part of African cooking, is the pumpkin leaf (known as Chibwabwa in Zambia). Pumpkin leaves are not only edible but delicious. We would prepare them with tomatoes, onion, and peanuts ground with mortar and pestle, and serve it with fufu. The local farmers in the area came to know her for the special things she would look for and would set aside these and other items for her that they knew she would love. It was from her that I learned to appreciate not only delicious food but I gained an understanding for the value in always buying fresh, local food.

To this day I make sure that all the food I cook keeps to this tradition. Our food is always as farm-to-table as possible. I make sure that I know how each of my ingredients have been grown and raised so that I can provide the best possible food experience to our clients.

Janice and I were very busy during our quarantine. We were truly fortunate to be able to have fresh ingredients delivered to us so that we could test and refine some amazing new recipes. We ate a lot of great food (and may have put on a pound or two in the name of research), and we created some wonderful new recipes. One of which we are happy to share with you today.

Beer Crust Pizza Dough

Beer Crust Pizza Dough

3 from 3 votes

Recipe by From the Kitchen of Jillian Harris

Ingredients

• 1 355ml beer can light local beer

• 2 tsp 2 of active yeast

• 3 cups 3 of flour (and some more for dusting)

• 1 tsp 1 of salt

• 2 tbsp 2 of olive oil

Directions

• Add yeast to warm beer and let sit. It will dissolve completely and the liquid will start to bubbling.
• Add olive oil to yeast mixture.
• Mix flour, sugar and salt together. Combine flour and yeast mixture. Knead together until it forms a smooth ball.
• Lightly rub olive oil in large bowl. Place dough in oiled bowl. Cover and let sit for 3 hours or overnight (it will double in size).
• Roll out and place on pan, poke holes with fork where toppings will go. Let rise for 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 425.
• Add sauce and toppings. Bake for 15 minutes or until crust is golden in colour.

This Beer Crust Pizza Dough has quickly become a favourite in our household. We started by making Brioche and then decided to try a Brioche pizza crust. Yeast was in short supply at that stage of quarantine though, which made me start thinking about how to make the dough rise with minimal yeast. It was while I was enjoying a delicious local beer with my brioche pizza that I had an epiphany. Beer is both carbonated and has yeast in it. These two properties together should work some magic in pizza dough, and the beer could add some delicious flavour to the crust without overpowering the pizza. I immediately began testing and came up with this recipe. This dough has the perfect spring and crunch to it and a wonderful flavour imparted by the beer.

I hope you love it as much as we do. If you try it please let us know what you think!

Until next time!

Jean – Salt N Sear Catering