Grilled pizza is one of those things that seems intimidating or even impossible, but it’s something I’ve wanted to try, especially with my newfound love of grilling. After seeing the posts on grilled pizza over on The Food in My Beard, it rose to the top of my list, and It turns out to be truly a simple and easy process, and very fun… I’ll definitely be making it again!

Usually when I make pizza I use pre-made dough from Trader Joe’s, which is quite good quality. I didn’t get a chance to stop by to pick one up, though, so I decided to try my hand at making some pizza dough, namely Alton Brown’s from his book I’m Just Here for More Food. It definitely added time to the whole process, but I think it was worth it. It was an amazingly delicious crust!

There’s not much to this recipe, ingredients wise. The dry ingredients are mixed with some water, which results in a pretty dry dough that needs some kneading to really come together.

Here it is after about 2 minutes, and everything has really come together into a nice dough ball. It’s clearly not well worked since it’s still really shaggy, but it’s got to rest a bit first.

After resting and some more kneading, it’s much more well developed. Even though it still looks shaggy here, that’s mainly because the dough is so thick that the dough hooks cut right through it.

After kneading by hand for only a few moments, the dough is smooth and ready for a rise.

The dough doesn’t rise very vigorously, but that’s good enough. It will spend the night in the refrigerator to let the flavors develop.

About an hour before you’re ready to put your pizza on the grill (or in the oven), the dough should come out of the fridge to bench proof, or basically come to room temperature and rise a little bit more (though it won’t rise a lot).

Here’s a picture of the chicken thighs I braised in some store-bought barbecue sauce (also the sauce for the pizza). I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of the whole tray of toppings, but everything had to be chopped up and ready to go because once the pizza goes on the grill, it’s a quick process. For this pizza we used the shredded barbecue chicken, cheddar and asiago cheeses, corn, green peppers and red onions.

The grill needs to be set up with one side hot, and one side cool. The dough gets stretched out with olive oil (not flour) and placed on the hot side of the grill. Cover it and let it cook for 2–3 minutes.

The the pizza gets flipped over to the cool side of the grill. You can see the char in the middle of the dough… it’s a good thing!

Now the pizza is on the cool side of the grill, not directly over the coals. You can actually see part of the topping tray, including the cheese and corn, in this picture.

Then (quickly!) the toppings go on.

Here’s the pizza with all the toppings piled up on top. It benefited from pushing down the toppings a bit and out toward the sides so that not much dough is exposed. The cover of the grill goes on, and the pizza cooks for 10 to 15 minutes more (only 15 minutes if your grill is really cool, I would guess… 10 minutes was fine for us).

After about 5 minutes, I was concerned that the side closer to the coals was charring quickly and would get overly cooked, so I rotated the pizza 180º at that point so that it would cook evenly on both sides.

This pizza was great; the crust was really thick (I used the entire Alton Brown dough recipe, which makes 4 one to two person pizzas), but well cooked and it held up well to all the toppings. The char made it crunchy on the outside but bready in the middle, which to me is the best of both worlds. Like I said, I’ll definitely be making this one again!

Below is the recipe for Alton Brown’s pizza dough. Go crazy with the toppings!

Pizza Dough (from Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for More Food)

Ingredients

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 1/4 cups water, warm

Directions

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add water and mix for 2 minutes with an electric mixer, or until the dough comes together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, adding more flour by the tablespoon as needed.
2. Allow the dough to rest for 15 minutes, then knead for 5 minutes or until the dough is well developed.
3. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead by hand for about 30 seconds, then work the dough into a ball. Place the ball in a large bowl with a little olive oil and toss the ball around to coat. Cover the bowl and set aside for one hour or until nearly doubled.
4. Fold down the dough and pat into a disk, then place it back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
5. An hour before you want the pizza to go on the grill (or in the oven), remove the dough and fold it down on itself, then leave it on the counter, covered, to bench proof.
6. Prepare the dough by stretching and pulling, making sure to let it rest for a few minutes every so often to let the gluten relax and make the stretching easier. For the grill, work it with olive oil and stretch it into a rectangle as long as will fit on your grill.