How to Grill Pizza

Once you've had a wood-fired pizza, regular old pizza is just not the same anymore. Even brick-oven pizza does not have the incredible texture of crust that has been cooked extremely quickly at very high heat, and toppings that have been transformed through the magic of flame-cooking. It's like the difference between a real, fresh New York bagel (or a Montreal bagel if that's your thing) and one of those white-bread bagel-shaped things from your grocer's freezer that you've thawed and toasted. Really shouldn't even be called a bagel.

Anyway. We are very devoted to wood-fired pizza. It is a revelation. Our family has been known to drive miles out of our way to procure it. We also like to watch how-to videos of creating your own backyard pizza oven. Someday we'll give it a try, though the very long curing process might be too much for us. (If you heat up your oven before it's completely dried, it could crack and get ruined. Stressful.) You can also spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on buying a wood-fired pizza oven (they make cute stainless steel ones that have a little chimney and everything!)

But until you get your wood-fired pizza oven up and running, here's a workaround that I've been trying at home. You can make pizza on your grill. It is pretty, pretty close to the glory of wood-firing.

Think of it as a temperature play: A wood-fired pizza oven gets up to 800 degrees. A conventional kitchen oven only gets up to 500. Grilling is fuel-efficient, too. If you're using a pizza stone in your kitchen oven, it's recommended to heat it at 500 degrees for an HOUR before you start baking pizza. That's a lot of propane (or electricity or whatever your oven uses). Is there a faster and more efficient way to get really really hot without buying a specialized piece of equipment or building your own backyard oven? Of course there is. Keep reading for all the details on how to pull off crisp, transformed pizza on your grill.

Here are the steps to grilling pizza in a nutshell: Spread dough onto a piece of parchment paper, place the dough AND paper on hot grill top for 3 minutes (grill closed). Remove the half-baked pizza from the grill and flip it over onto an oiled cookie sheet so the cooked side is up. Place sauce and toppings, then slide the pizza back onto the grill, close the grill and cook another 3 minutes. Gently slide off the grill onto a large cutting board. Slice. Serve. YUM!

 

Grilled Pizza Tip 1: Lots of Work Surfaces

It's true that a lot of prep-work can help make your pizza-grilling go smoothly. But here's another very important piece of advice--make sure you have a lot of surface area to work on. If you have a card table or a larger folding table, set it up next to your grill. You're going to need space for:

• cookie sheet to make an oiling station
• your prepared toppings (set them up on another cookie sheet)
  
• each pizza to be spread out on parchment paper
• tools like tongs, long spatula, pizza cutter (or chef's knife)
  
• cutting board for slicing your hot pizza (or use another cookie sheet)
  
• platter to hold finished slices
  
• your beverage--this is thirsty work!

 

 

Here I'm improvising with 2 small tables and a chair. Using a larger, higher table is MUCH better (see next photo), but improvising works fine if you don't have a big table at the ready.

Grilled Pizza Tip 2: Use Parchment Paper

Do you remember a time, I think it was in the 1900s, when we didn't use parchment paper in the kitchen all the time? I remember learning about foods cooked "en papillote" and it sounded so exotic. Now I use parchment paper for many baking projects, and it's the perfect tool to make your pizza grilling go smoothly. Why? Well this is going to sound nutty, but... you can GRILL THE PARCHMENT PAPER. It makes it so much easier to get a pizza that's close to the shape that you want. It's also super-handy for transporting pizza or resting pizza. Essentially it's like a giant, super-thin tray that can be used or removed effortlessly. Here are the steps for using parchment paper:

First, have all toppings ready. See below for my recipe--I like to mix and match a bit, so I have 2 types of sauce, cheese, pepperoni, olives, and random vegetables all set up. Set these aside.

Turn on your grill.

Cut as many pieces of parchment paper as you will make pizzas. I used two balls of store-bought dough that I divided into halves, so I cut 4 pieces of parchment paper. The rule of thumb is that the pizza must be SMALLER than the surface area of your grill. Seems obvious, but just sayin'. It's OK though if your parchment paper sticks out of the grill when you close it. That's the magic of using paper... it's flexible.

Pour olive oil (or a high-heat oil of your choice, maybe grapeseed) onto a cookie sheet and put your balls of dough in the oil.

Take your first ball of dough and pull and turn it so that it's fairly round and pizza-shaped. It will not be perfect. If the dough is nice and soft it may start to "drip" downward and not stay round--that's fine. Just do your best to make it fairly round, then plop it onto one piece of parchment paper.

Once on the paper, you can push the dough gently toward the edges to try to make it more round or oval shaped. You can try patching holes or folding dough over holes, but it's OK if small holes occur.

 

These are two pizzas ready to be fired. See how helpful it is to have a big work table nearby?

Next is where the magic happens. Check that your grill is heated--ours has a thermometer that goes up to about 650. Open it and put the pizza AND THE PAPER right on the grill. Close the grill. Set your timer for 3 minutes.

 

 

Now you're going to flip the pizza, but NOT on the grill. You will remove the pizza from the grill and place your toppings on just the way you like them, and only then return it to the heat. 

To do this, pull off or pick up the pizza while it's on the parchment paper (use the paper to help you), and turn it onto the cookie sheet with olive oil so that the grilled side is UP. Set aside parchment paper for now. REMEMBER TO CLOSE THE GRILL before moving to the next step. (I forgot this a few times, and lost all that accumulated heat and then had to wait for the temp to go back up.)

Grilled Pizza Tip 3: Go Light with Toppings

Now, top that baby! Sauces, cheeses, toppingses. Apply your favorites. My advice here is to go light--if you put on a lot of toppings, they will start to pool up and get soupy. That is not what grilled pizza is about. You want your grilled pizza to be light and just kissed with all the right toppings. Kind of the opposite of deep dish. So have a light hand, and remember that everything is going to get blasted together in the heat and will be delicious.

This one is a veggie pizza with pesto, cheese, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, fresh herbs, and zucchini ribbons.

OK we're getting close now. The next step is to return the topped pizza to the grill. I find that taking the cookie sheet over to the grill and gently sliding the pizza onto the grill-top worked fine (no parchment paper needed for this step). Shut the grill again and set your timer for 3 minutes. You can let it go a little longer if the cheese isn't melted to your liking. But also don't let it burn--the cheese can keep cooking with residual heat if you need to take the pizza off to avoid burning the crust.

 

To get a piping hot pizza off a grill, I use a long spatula (like a mini pizza peel) and a silicone cutting board. I lift one edge of the pizza and start pulling it onto the cutting board, then I keep lifting and sliding until the whole pizza is on the board. Then I can set it aside to cool a little while I get the next pizza starting to grill. If you need the cutting board for something else, reuse a piece of parchment from when you started grilling as a surface for your hot pizza to rest.

Last step? Cut your pizza! Our rotary pizza wheel is pretty crummy, so sometimes I use a chef's knife to really crunch down and slice through. I don't make triangular slices like a normal round pizza, but instead cut off various polygonal shapes (preferably somewhat pointy ones).

 

That's it! Repeat the process for each pizza. Do keep your pizzas small--like 12-15 inches across--to help with maneuvering on and off the grilltop. You can also pour more olive oil onto your topping station cookie sheet, as it will help oil up the ungrilled side of the pizza and help it not stick to the grill.

 

Grilled Pizza Recipe

Ingredients:

1-2 balls of premade pizza dough (I used 2 balls for 4 12-inch pizzas) 

Sauces of your choice, such as tomato-based pizza sauce or pesto

Cheese of your choice, such as grated mozzarella or cheddar

Toppings of your choice--anything you like! I used:

• zucchini ribbons that I pre-cooked a little in a grill basket
• portobello mushroom slices (I grilled the mushroom a bit first, then sliced it)
• artichoke hearts, sliced
• fresh herbs--like basil, summer savory, oregano
• kalamata olives cut in half
• broccoli cut into small pieces (I used frozen broccoli--it's just easier)
• pepperoni 

Other topping ideas might be fresh spinach or arugula or baby kale leaves, cooked spinach or other greens, crumbled cooked sausage, crumbled bacon, blue cheese, ham & pineapple, cooked sliced potato, cooked chicken or fake chicken, dabs of goat cheese, slices of fresh mozzarella, prosciutto... OK I am just naming all the possible pizza toppings in the world. And that's kind of the point, this is a method for making whatever YOUR favorite pizza might be.

Instructions:

Get your grill station ready with the pre-cut parchment paper, prepared toppings, long spatula, tongs if you like, large cutting board, knife or pizza cutter, a towel for oily hands, and platter for finished slices. Have your phone or a timer ready, too. Heat your grill to 600-650 degrees.

Then, follow my method of forming the dough into a round, placing it on parchment paper and adjusting shape, then pop the dough AND paper on your hot grill. Grill, closed, for 3 minutes, then flip onto your oiled cookie sheet with grilled side up. Add sauce and toppings, slide back onto grill (no paper this time). After 3 minutes, pull the cooked pizza onto a cutting board (or second cookie sheet) and let it cool. Then cut. Repeat the process for each pizza.

I hope you try the parchment method of grilling pizza if you are a fan of pizza or seeking a semi-wood-fired experience as a home cook. Let me know if you do. Someone recently told me they started grilling their breakfast burritos and they are incredible. Sounds reallllly good.