Charcoal Series: Pizza on a Grill!

This past weekend had been the most fun I’ve had on my grill. We made pizza on the barbecue!

It rained over the entire weekend, but fortunately as it turned out, you can still barbecue as long as there’s shelter for the grill. Some of my charcoal got soaked, but we had enough dry charcoal to get a fire going. We added the wet charcoal in afterwards, which was fine.

Despite visions of warm dough melting through the grill into the charcoal bed, making pizza on the grill is easier than you think. After all, people have been cooking flatbread over fire for millennia, and in all sorts of warm climate.

The pizzas were so well-received on Saturday, we had another go on Sunday. I made another batch of dough before I turned in for the night, and the dough was ready for the next day.

It’s quite a forgiving recipe. Neapolitan pizza enthusiasts who hand-stretch their doughs may gasp at the thought of rolling out pizza dough, as that destroys the airy pockets in the pizza crust. The ambient temperature is hot too, and despite all my efforts, my dough remained shaggy. I confess: it did not pass the windowpane test, no matter how much I kneaded. The end product still came out wonderful, with a crisp exterior crust and a chewy interior.

This recipe is particularly terrific if you’re hosting a barbecue. It’s a genuinely great tasting product. The turnover is also fast; a pizza can be churned out every few minutes and easily shared amongst a few people. And of course, the wow factor: few people would have had a grilled pizza like this.

Grilled Pizza Recipe
Original recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt
Makes 4 pizzas
There are a couple of videos (here, and here) of Kenji making grilled pizza. It’s immensely helpful to see once or twice how it’s done before attempting it for yourself. I’ve made a few changes to the instructions to reflect the way that I do it, but feel free to go in your own direction if you like. The original dough recipe contains 10g of yeast, and I scaled up the proportion to 11g of yeast, because each sachet of instant yeast contains 11 grams.

Ingredients
The Dough (store-bought pizza dough is also fine)
700g of bread flour, plus more for dusting
16g granulated sugar
11g salt
11g instant yeast
450g lukewarm water
50ml extra-virgin olive oil

The Pizza Toppings
300g canned whole tomatoes (store-bought bolognese pasta sauce is fine. If so, omit the salt and the sugar)
Large pinch of salt
Large pinch of sugar
4 garlic cloves, minced
Olive oil, enough to cover the minced garlic cloves
500g grated full-fat mozzarella cheese (I buy frozen, and thaw it for a couple of hours at room temperature beforehand)
Other Possible Toppings: crumbled feta cheese, cooked sliced mushrooms, boiled potatoes cut into slices, canned pineapples chunks (yes, yes. Save your outrage for someone else.)

Steps
For the Dough
1. Combine flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a large mixing bowl, the largest that you have. Add water and olive oil, and mix to form a shaggy ball of dough.

2. Transfer dough ball to a lightly-floured surface and knead by hand until smooth ball is formed. The elasticity of the dough should pass the windowpane test, but don't worry if not. The pizza would still turn out to be remarkable. Promise.

3. Cover the dough and place in the fridge to cold-ferment at least overnight, or up to 5 days.

4. At least two hours before grilling, divide the dough into four and shape into balls. Oil each dough, and fold each dough over itself and stretching the seams of the dough closer together, then repeat until the surface of each dough is smooth and the seams are at the bottom of the dough. Pinch the seams tightly shut.

5. Separate each dough into a large individual oiled bowl. Cover tightly with clingwrap and allow to rise at warm room temperature for 2 hours, or until roughly doubled in size.

For the Pizza
1. One hour before grilling, set up a two-zone fire (a hotter side with all the charcoal, and a cooler side). The charcoal needs to be ripping hot, which would take about 45 minutes to an hour to reach.

2. In the meantime, prepare the rest of the pizza toppings, which should be laid out in individual bowls on a table next to the grill for ease of use. All toppings should be thoroughly cooked beforehand, because there isn't enough time for raw toppings to be cooked after they are added to the pizza. There's two ingredients in particular to pay attention to:

A. Open up the can of whole tomatoes into a bowl and mash into a cohesive puree. Add a large pinch of salt, and a large pinch of sugar if needed. Alternatively, you may just buy a can of bolognese sauce. Set aside.

B. In another bowl, steep 4 cloves' worth of minced garlic in olive oil with a pinch of salt. You'll brush this over the dough before grilling, but you can set this aside for now. I have a suspicion that the minced garlic causes flare-ups if it falls into the charcoal, which can blacken and burn parts of your dough. Before cooking, I will recommend to decant the garlic-infused olive oil into another bowl, and mix the minced garlic into the tomato sauce to prevent this from occurring.

And a glass of wine for, umm... reasons. 

3. When ready to grill, scatter the burning charcoal as evenly as you can over half of the grill. This prevents hot spots and ensures the dough browns evenly.

4. On a tray/cutting board that is large enough to roll out the dough, oil the surface of the board and a rolling pin with the garlic oil. Roll out each ball, adding a bit more oil along the process if you do. (I know Kenji uses flour before brushing the garlic-infused oil afterwards, but in a warm climate like mine, oil seems to work better to prevent sticking.)

5. Transfer the rolled-out dough over to the hot side of the grill. It'll cook quickly, about a minute. You can rotate the dough 90 degrees midway through when the bottom has firmed up a little, to get a nice grid pattern and a more even cooking. You can use a thin spatula (I use a fish spatula) or a pair of tongs to lift the edge of the dough off to peep at the bottom - if one part is starting to blacken, you can move it away from the part of the grill that is hotter than the rest.

6. When the bottom is cooked and browned, you can flip it over to cook the other side. On the browned surface, add cheese. The radiant heat, together with the heat off the dough should be sufficient to melt the cheese. Add the rest of your toppings. Tomato sauce should be dolloped over the pizza and not smeared. Don't go overboard with the toppings - grilled pizzas are meant to be topped judiciously. It's not a multi-layered fiesta!

7. When the other side of the pizza is browned as well, you can remove it from the grill. If the cheese or topping still needs a bit more time, you can slide the pizza to the cooler half of the grill to continue cooking gently. When done, transfer to a clean cutting board, slice, and serve immediately.

8. Repeat the process for the remaining dough balls.