Making Pizza on a Grill

When grilling out this summer, consider something special - Grilled Pizza.  Making Pizza on the grill is a little more difficult than baking, but it is a delicious treat with that smokey grill flavor that people will enjoy and ask for again and again.  Here are the steps you will need to follow to make a prefect grilled pizza.

1.     Create a good bed of coals that has an even heat.  Coals should be white hot.

2.     Start out with good pizza dough, and roll it out to about ¼” thick.  A thin crust does well on a grill, but it has to be thick enough to not fall apart.

This peel for sale at our
General Store works well with pizza

3.   Roll the dough on a counter top with lots of flour to make sure it doesn’t stick when transferring it to the peel or cookie sheet.  The peel shown on the right works very nicely for pizza and is on sale at our General Store.

4.     Do not curl up the edges of the crust when preparing it for cooking on the grill.

5.     Put coarse corn meal onto a peel like the one shown on the right and transfer the crust to the grill and then cover.  At this time you will only cook one side of the crust.

6.     Turn the crust as needed to cook evenly.  Hot and cool spots may be present across the grill. 

7.     Using the peel, remove the crust and lay the cooked side up back on the countertop, peel or cookie sheet.

8.     The pizza is now ready for toppings.  Lay out fresh basil and add a thin coating of sauce.  Adding too much sauce may create a soggy pizza that could fall apart on the grill.  Add other ingredients and then cover with cheese.

9.     Use the peel to gently slide the uncooked side down onto the grill.  It may be helpful to use a large spatula to remove the pizza from the peel and transfer it back to the grill.  Cover the pizza, but rotate it every 1-3 minutes, depending on how hot the coals are.   

10.  When the pizza looks nicely browned, remove it carefully using the peel.