There's nothing quite like Italian varietals and wonderful Italian food to make my day.

Today, I'm going to pair up some delicious Italian varietals.

And the first thing we're going to make is a delicious pizza.

I'm gonna feature this with a little Pinot Grigio which is just a lovely light high acid wine, it's wonderful.

We're gonna make some pizza dough first.

So let's get started.

In my bowl, I have some flour, just some all-purpose flour.

And I'm gonna put in that a little bit of yeast and a little sugar.

Now, I like to use a rapid yeast so that it rises pretty quickly.

And then what I wanna do is just pour in about two cups of water and then let's get in it with our hands.

So what you wanna do is just start mixing all of that together, just pull it forward, mix it around, make sure that that sugar and yeast gets into all of your dough.

Now, the reason that I don't put the salt in or the oil at the beginning is because both salt and oil will impede the gluten process.

And I wanna make sure that I really get this started before I put any oil or salt into the mix.

Now let's go ahead and add that salt.

About a tablespoon, and then about a table spoon of olive oil.

And just again, press, get that olive oil in there, really get it going.

And as you do this, you're picking up all of those bits from the bottom of your bowl.

Now I've got it in a nice ball.

And what I wanna do now is just to take it out, put it on a little board and knead it for a while until that gluten is really, really starting to get going on this dough and everything is nice and smooth and elastic.

Now, I like to dust my surface with just a little bit of flour.

And keep a little flower at your side, just so that you can keep incorporating that in.

And I'm gonna show you how to knead this so that you're developing that gluten, you're gonna get a beautiful crust that's fluffy while at the same time, crisp on the bottom and it has great structure to hold your pizza together.

So what we wanna do is look at our dough like it's a clock, 12 o'clock six o'clock, three o'clock, nine o'clock.

So I wanna take 12 o'clock to six, and I wanna press out like this, really press hard with your hands.

Then I wanna take three o'clock to nine and turn it and do the same so that your nine o'clock becomes your six o'clock.

And we're going to keep doing this all over until our dough is smooth and elastic.

(tranquil ambient music) Okay, so look at that dough, beautifully smooth elastic.

Now let's just cut it into four pieces.

It'll make four beautiful pizzas.

So what I wanna do is take my dough and just make it into balls.

And I'm gonna take a little cookie sheet, and just plop those on the cookie sheet.

And then I'll grease the top of them just slightly.

I usually like to use a little olive oil in a spray bottle and put that right on the top, cover it with plastic wrap for about 45 minutes, and then these are ready to go.

Now let's make this filling and I love to do roasted brussel sprouts so that's where this inspiration came from.

So we're going to take a little bit of bacon and I just happen to have the kind of bacon that's already pre baked.

If you use fresh bacon, that's even better because you get more fat out of it, but I just wanna render what little bit of fat there is left out of this bacon.

And because I'm using pre-cooked bacon, I'm gonna add a little olive oil.

If you're using fresh bacon, don't do that.

So about a tablespoon, tablespoon and a half will do it for this.

So the reason that I cook all this in advance is because when you're cooking, particularly in an outdoor oven, the pizza cooks so fast that all of the ingredients will be raw if you don't cook them first.

So now I wanna add a little bit of onion, about a quarter cup.

And I wanna add my brussel sprouts.

I have eight brussel sprouts here, exactly, eight brussel sprouts.

So about six pieces of bacon, quarter cup of onions, eight brussel sprouts.

So what we're doing is just kind of emulating that roasting process here.

Ah, that looks delicious.

Now let's build that pizza.

Okay, so we have our beautiful dough, it's risen about 45 minutes and it just started to deflate a little bit as I put it on this board.

Now, what I wanna do is just dust my rolling pin so things don't stick.

And I dusted my surface again, and we just wanna roll that to about 11 or so inches.

Now instead of flour, I like to use corn meal on my board.

It gives a little more of that grit on the bottom and allows it to slide better, and lay it right out on our board.

There we go.

Make sure it slides.

Yeah, great sliding.

Now I wanna take a little bit of cheese and for this one, I like to use a little fresh cheese, so a fresh mozzarella but remember that mozzarella has a lot of water in it so you don't wanna overdo it on the mozzarella.

And then we're gonna take about half of this filling, this filling will make for two pizzas.

And let's just give it a sprinkle.

And I love this roasted brussel sprout flavor all on the pizza, it's just amazing.

Okay.

Just a touch more.

And then I'm gonna slide it right into my oven.

(tranquil ambient music) Again, make sure it slides a little bit.

If it doesn't, kind of lift those edge spots and put in some more or corn meal All right.

This is such a beautiful pizza.

And you can see that you got a nice brown crust, it's crispy on the bottom.

Oh, it's just gonna be delicious.

So let's give it a shot.

So I have this beautiful Pinot Grigio.

Now a lot of vegetables are really hard to pair with wine.

Brussel sprouts and Pinot Grigio are just amazing.

So let's give it a taste.

Hmm.

Wanna get one of those brussel sprouts.

Hmm.

So good.

Wow, what a pairing?

Hmm.

I love this flavor.

And if you're a vegetarian, this is gonna be a great one for you, just take out the bacon, just take out that bacon and use some delicious brussel sprouts and any kind of cheese that you like.