Learn how to bake pizza on your grill

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 problay 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.

Related articles and products:

Pizza mixes
Pizza tools
How to Bake Bread on the Grill
The Everywhere Timer
Country Breakfast Pizza
Veggie and Sausage Supreme Pizza
Make your own pizza sauce

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