Grilled Pizza

Pizza cooked right on a grill may sound weird to some people, but the flavor that develops is something that doesn’t quite happen in a typical oven (unless you are lucky enough to have your own pizza oven!).

This was our dinner on a beautiful, warm, still very sunny evening. In other words, perfect grilling weather. And I had pizza dough rising in the fridge with tons of fresh veggies from the farmers market this morning. Look at the start of the char on the veggies (and the air bubbles in the crust too)!

All three of us wanted different things on the pizza, so of course I had to make three rounds of dough. Use whatever kind of dough you’d like here. I make mine from scratch in the morning and let it slowly rise in the fridge all day. Most grocery stores have pretty decent doughs and some pizzerias will even sell their dough if you have a favorite pizza restaurant.

Our next door neighbor smoked ribs yesterday. Do you know how hard it is to smell that while working from home all day? He did bring us over a big plate of ribs after they were done, thanks neighbor! And I caught Jelani and Paxton putting at least one piece in their mouths for each piece went on the plate as they were pulling the meat off the bones to add to their pizzas.

In addition to the ribs, the boys added some of the charred pepper and corn, spinach, barbecue sauce, and mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. They were happy, which made me happy.

I opted for a grilled veggie pizza. As good as the ribs smelled, I knew if I ate them I would wind up with a bad stomachache. Pork and I do not get along very well. I added some of the grilled pepper and corn, zucchini, spinach, fresh garlic, basil, and squash blossoms for decoration with a light sprinkle of sea salt over the crust.

The general rule of thumb when putting the dough straight onto the grill is to just get one side done enough to hold together (and show some grill marks) before removing it and putting the toppings on the cooked side so that the uncooked side gets cooked as the cheese melts.

I, of course, forgot this as we were building our pizzas and didn’t realize until after I put them back on the grill. Oops! So into the oven, they went to finish melting the cheese without (hopefully) burning the crust anymore.

The crusts did turn out to be a little overdone, but they had a great flavor from the grill. The little guy swiped some of his pizza before I could get a picture of it, along with some of the corn that wasn’t used for the pizza.

So my general rule of thumb for grilling pizzas directly on the grate is to place the dough on the well-heated grill for a couple of minutes with the lid open until the underside just sets and starts to show grill marks. Take the dough off, flip it over, and put the toppings on the cooked side. Put the pizza back on the grill with the flames down to low, raw side down, close the lid, and cook until the cheese starts melting. The timing here will depend on how hot your grill gets with the flames on low, so play around with this to get the timing down for your grill.

Because who wants to have the oven on to 500 degrees during the summer?