Pizza is even easier to bake on your grill
than is bread. Pizzas are baked quick
and hot—perfect for the grill. You can
have picture-perfect pizzas from your
grill in no time.
Pizzas make great party food but no one
wants to heat the oven up to 400 plus
degrees in the summer. That’s okay—fix
it on the grill. It’s super easy to bake
pizzas on the grill. Not only is it the slick
way to bake pizzas in the summer, you’ll
really impress your friends and family—a
backyard magician.
You will need a grill with a cover. You can use gas or charcoal though the charcoal will
impart a slightly smoked flavor to your pizza.
Pizzas are baked hot and fast. On our grill, we turn the heat up all the way and have
pizzas baked in eight to ten minutes. We probably should turn the heat down a bit and
bake it a little longer, but hey—we have this system down.
The key to pizzas on the grill is to not burn the bottom of the crust. Elevate your pizza to
get it as far from the flames as possible. And put something on the bottom to insulate the
bottom of the pan.
We always use a pizza stone and consider it essential though we are confident that you
can bake a fine pizza with a pizza pan on top of a baking sheet, maybe a wire rack
between the two to create a little extra insulating air space. While we use a pizza stone,
we bake the pizza in a pan and place the pan on the stone. We have used a peel and
placed the pizza right on the stone and it works fine but we like to minimize our work
around the hot grill.
We use our Italian Bread and Pizza Mixes but you can use your favorite recipe.
Here’s how to bake your pizza:
· Mix the dough according to package or recipe directions just as if baking for the
oven.
· While the dough is rising, heat the baking stone on the top shelf of your grill. You
will want the stone very hot so let it heat for 20 minutes or so before you add the
pizza.
· Don’t pile the goodies on the pizza too deep; they tend to insulate the crust from
the essential top heat.
· Either place the pizza directly on the stone or place a pizza pan on the stone. Be
certain that the pizza doesn’t extend beyond the edge of the stone. The edge,
unprotected from the stone, will burn.
· If your grill doesn’t bake evenly, and most don’t, turn the stone or pan 180
degrees about half way through baking.
· Set the timer—we set it for eight minutes—and then check for doneness by lifting
the edge of the crust.
· Once done, immediately remove the pizza from the stone. If you don’t the stone
will continue to bake the pizza.
Learn how to make a calzone
Calzones are closely related to pizzas,
ort of a folded over pizza. Somehow
hough, cutting into the crisp, golden
rust of a calzone to reveal a luscious
lling is a different experience than
ating a pizza. But if you can make a
izza, you can make a calzone. In this
rticle, we’ll tell you how and give you a
ecipe.
ou can use nearly any pizza crust
ecipe to make calzones. The fillings are
sually different than the toppings on a
izza; use ricotta instead of hard cheese
or the filling base. (Although you can make calzones without any cheese in the filling.)
Keep the following principles in mind as you build your calzones:
1. For the filling, simple combinations really do work best. Less is truly better.
2. Calzones take longer to cook than pizza and require a lower temperature in order
to crisp the crust and to penetrate the filling. They generally take 15 to 20
minutes to bake at 400 degrees.
3. Smaller is better. Make calzones that are 6 to 12 inches long.
Most calzones are made in the traditional half-moon shape that is achieved by rolling or
ressing out the dough ball into a circle. The filling is mounded into the bottom half of the
ircle and the top part is folded over and crimped by hand or with a fork.
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