Grilled Pizza

You want to make pizza on your outdoor grill or barbecue so you don’t have to heat up your house on a hot day.

You also like that smoky, savory difference you’ve tasted in outdoor pizza.

You could just throw a pizza stone on your grill.

Then you’d just fire it up and hope your stone doesn’t crack with the thermal shock of sudden temperature rises and falls when you lift the hood to check on your pizza. But you decide you’d better search for pizza-grilling recipes and techniques first.

You’re shocked and daunted by the number of recipes calling for you to lay your dough directly on the grill, then, halfway through, lift and flip the dough, build your pizza on the half-baked base, and return it to the flames. Yikes. A little char can be nice, but this baby’s bound to burn.

Here’s an example of this daring outdoor adventure:

Please have your fire department on speed dial before you (literally) light up.

I’ve thought about this problem and come up with the solution.

I decided the best approach is to turn my grill into an outdoor pizza oven. A thick, heavy, 14-inch diameter cast iron pizza pan stands in for the stone. You place it on your grill or barbecue to heat up. (By the way, this technique works on gas and charcoal grills.)

Meanwhile, you lightly oil the kit’s perforated pizza disk, stretch your pizza dough, and slide it onto the disk. Then you give the dough its final shaping and start building your pizza.

The disk’s perforations keep the pizza dough dry and crusty in the baking process. It also eliminates the need for cornmeal or flour to slide the pizza onto the “stone.”

When the pizza you assembled on the disk is ready to bake, you place the pizza, still on its disk, onto the aluminum peel and slide it onto the now hot cast iron pizza pan on your grill.

Then close the grill’s hood, checking every few minutes quickly to see how it’s baking without losing heat.

You can use the kit’s two pan grippes help you adjust the pizza on the cast iron pan and rotate the pizza for even cooking.

When your pizza’s done, slide the peel back under the disk and remove the pizza to a heat and flame resistant surface.

Slice and serve.

Leave the cast iron pizza pan on the grill to bake more pizzas or gradually cool down. But then remove it so overnight condensation doesn’t cause corrosion of the cast iron.

Of course you’ll also get great pizza making results with this kit in your kitchen oven.

How do you make pizza on your outdoor grill or barbecue? I’d love to see pictures and explanations.

And if you’ve tried our Pizza Grill Kit, please report in how it worked for you.