Making Pizza on a gas Grill

[LoveToEatATL]

I am searching for the best way to make pizza on a gas grill. I know...I love a charcoal Webber, but a recent move to an apartment in Santa Monica (with gas grills by the pool) have prevented me from doing a lot of grilling.

Who has some fabulous ideas and techniques for making pizza on a gas grill?

Thanks!

Patti

[zoe b]

I have tried it without much luck--but i read not too long ago --can't remember where--something that makes sense--cook the dough for awhile--maybe until it's half cooked--flip it--then add the toppings--this solves the floppy dough problem--of course it would have to be things that cook fairly fast--or possibly you could slide it over to a side that's not on to finish cooking the toppings if the crust is done.

good luck with it--you may draw a crowd--I know this always happened when we grilled stuff at my daughter's poolside grills.

[Marlene]

We did grilled pizza for an eG tag team blog a while ago. As I recall, yes, the dough was cooked on one side first, then flipped and toppings put on. I also pre cooked most of my toppings.

Edited to add link to said said pizza grilling

Edited August 13, 2007 by Marlene (log)

[Peter the eater]

Check out Bon Appetit, July 1997. The cover shows a grilled pizza just as described above, grill one side then flip and add pre-cooked toppings.

Grilled on a pizza is one of the greatest uses for eggplant, in my estimation.

[feedmec00kies]

America's Test Kitchen had something about grilled pizza as well (they had recipes listed for both charcoal and gas grill). ATK's recipe, like the bon appetit version Peter the eater mentioned, involves grilling the dough on one side, and then flipping it and adding the toppings.

I haven't tried either the charcoal or gas grill version yet, but the gas grill version is here if you're interested.

Edited August 13, 2007 by feedmec00kies (log)

[Dave Hatfield]

We do pizza on the grill fairly often (we use a gas grill, but traditional works just as well if you can get the heat even enough.)

We call it do it yourself pizza. We make a regular pizza dough then divide it into small balls. (about 6-8 inches in diameter when rolled out thinly.) I will have made a fresh tomato sauce previously so its ready to use. All of the vegetables are pre- cooked (my wife does a roast with eggplant, tomato, onion, garlic, sweet pepper & .... whatever is in season.), cheeses either shredded or cut into small chunks, meats cooked if needed. Anchovies & whatever else you like on your pizza cut up & ready.

Each guest gets a dough ball to roll out. The rolled dough goes onto a very hot BBQ. It only takes a minute or so to cook. Then the pizza is lifted with tongs, flipped over onto a plate and the guest loads on their choice of topping. Back onto the grill just long enough to crisp up the other side & melt the cheese.

One secret is to not load up the pizza with too much topping.

We normally finish with a pizza topped only with a garlic butter & fresh rosemary topping. Yummy!

Always a hit. Turns grown ups into children.

[Katie Meadow]

Is the flipping technique (i.e. partial bake crust) a way to make pizza if you don't have a stone? If you have a pizza stone, is there a reason not to use it the same way as you would in an oven? We make pizza all the time in our oven using a basic round pizza stone. The oven gets preheated with the stone in as hot as possible--we get close to 500 degrees. The dough is rolled out and turned onto the wooden peel, then on goes the tomato sauce, cheese and prepared toppings (usually raw sliced tomato, pre-cooked veggies, pre-carmelized onions, whatever) and then the pizza is slid quickly onto the stone and cooked til done. If the dough is rolled out nice and thin it gets fairly crispy, altho not cracker-crisp. Our pizza cooks in about 10 minutes this way. I always thought those wonderful cracker-crisp pizzas were only achievable with a wood-fired oven that got closer to 700 degrees.

Our gas grill does get up to 500 degrees, and since cooking is done w/lid closed, why couldn't you just preheat the stone in the grill and build the pizzas and omit the flipping step? I've noticed that William-Sonoma markets a pricey rectangular stone designed for gas grills, so I assume a simply old-fashioned stone would work as well.

Maybe most gas grills just can't maintain the high heat well enough, so you need to compensate for the slower cooking time? Maybe the pre-cooking, flipping and then adding toppings makes for a super crispy crust? I'm thinkin' we'll do our next pizza in the grill and see what happens.

[rgruby]

The best (thin crust ) pizzas I've been able to achieve were on a gas grill but with a pizza stone. So, if you have a pizza stone, try moving it from your oven to the gas grill. I'm pretty sure this has been discussed a little bit here on one of the pizza threads. If I recall, I and another egulletter had good results with a relatively wet dough doing this.

Otherwise, the par-grilling the crust and flipping and adding toppings sounds pretty good.

I can imagine adding some smoke flavours (via a smoking box or foil) could add some nice flavors/ aromas too.

cheers,

geoff Ruby

[LoveToEatATL]

Well folks, we threw a grilled pizza by the pool party, and it turned out ...ish.

We bought 3 large dough balls from a local pizzeria, and cut each into five personal sized doughs. A rolling pin made fast work of shaping each small ball into a thin pie, then we stacked them with parchment between and left them in the fridge until party time.

With the grill *very* hot, I threw a pie crust on. After about 45 seconds, it looked half-cooked, so i flipped it. It was already burnt! The loss of a crust encouraged us to retrieve our pizza stone. When the stone was hot, I tossed a new crust on. Keeping a paper-thin crust (that's been stuck to parchment for a couple of hours) in the shape of a circle proved trickier than I expected and the first one was ugly but tasty: we used a blender-tomato sauce from one of you fine folks, and I topped it with shaved red onion and sliced black olives.

As the next hour passed, I cranked out pizza after pizza, cooking ten pies, all told. Only a couple more attempts ended in failure - one crust tore then folded, another hung off the edge of the stone and burned pretty bad. The crowd favorite was a barbecued chicken pizza: barbecue sauce instead of tomato sauce, sauteed and diced chicken, and red onion; I was partial to the simple tomato sauce and pepperoni.

The last pizzas were the best, of course, as our technique improved. Using the hot stone and pargrilling, with a turn before the sauce, turned out to make the best of the crusts, but the edges of all the pies were still a bit doughy inside after having cooked. Next time, we'll leave the dough bigger and roll it out a bit thicker, we think that will help it cook a little more fully and evenly.

Now for the bad news: when we were cleaning up, our pizza stone broke - it will be missed. I think I'll go with a square one this time, not another round one. There's no room for error on a round stone.

Who's coming over next weekend for another pizza party?!

ps: tracey you win the bet