How To Make Pizza on the Grill
Posted on September 3, 2009 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Techniques
Fridays are tip days at SimpleProductivity blog.
We like to have pizza on Friday nights. It’s the end of the week, and it’s the day I like to take off cooking.
After Domino’s started leaving messages at home with “frequent buyer” offers, I knew I had to cut back. After all, I was seeing the delivery guy more often than my neighbors! So we started making home-made pizza.
It’s rather easy, actually. You mix up the dough, roll it out, add toppings and cook. I use a fabulous dough recipe I found on the internet (Mitch’s Basic Pizza Dough – - FabulousFoods.com). The instructions for doing food processor, bread machine and hand mixing are all there. I usually use the bread machine.
During the summer, though, I didn’t want to turn on the oven. My neighbor had told me that she grilled pizza, but my husband said it couldn’t be done. I set out one Friday to prove him wrong.
(These instructions are a combination of various sources I found on the ‘Net, and put together to work on our gas grill).
Grilling Pizza
Make your dough. As I said before, I mix up the dough in the bread machine. My new-to-me bread machine doesn’t have a dough cycle, so I time the dough for 45 minutes and pull it out.
Roll it out. I adjusted the recipe to fit my small breadmaker, and I can make three plate-sized pizzas for us. I split the dough in three pieces, and using a generously floured mat, roll it out into a quasi-circle. These are transferred to a floured platter with pieces of waxed paper between them.
Make your sauce. For sauce I use one 8 ounce can of tomato sauce and generous amounts of basil, garlic, oregano and onion powder. I will also add a pinch of salt and a shaking of pepper.
Take everything to the grill. The assembly on this moves very quickly, so you will need to have your sauce, cheese and toppings ready to go, out by the grill.
Prepare your grill. I fire up the grill, cleaning the grates well. Some instructions said to oil the grates, but I found this wasn’t necessary with our grill. Let the grill heat up, on high, for a few minutes.
Grill the dough, first side. I only do one piece of dough at a time so I am not juggling things. I leave the dough on there for about a minute and a half, or until the dough slides around. I found that you have to watch it very carefully. When it is done, I slide the cooked dough onto an floured empty pizza pan, turning the cooked side up.
Close the grill lid and top the pizzas. Keeping the grill lid closed keeps the temperature up. If you try to top the pizzas on the grill, your toppings will not be hot before the bottom burns. Top the pizza off the grill.
Cook the other side. I let the topped pizza slide off the pizza pan onto the grill grate and cook it for about another minute and a half. The toppings will be hot, and the bottom crisp.
My husband claims this is the best pizza he has ever eaten. So far we’ve just done the standard pepperoni and cheese pizzas, but we will be branching out into other types very soon.
Photo by Robert S. Donovan
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