Whole Wheat Crust Pizzas on Gas Grill Using Unglazed Quarry Tiles
It's summer time. Finally. The grill gets cleaned up, and ready to be used as many times as possible until the rain and cold comes again in October. I have been itching to try making some thin crust pizzas on my gas grill but now utilizing some unglazed quarry tiles. The tiles really helped up the quality of my breads so I figured they should help my pizzas on the grill. My past attempts making pizzas on the grill were both frustrating and disappointing. Burnt bottoms due to the direct flame, and overall just not what I was after.
I have been craving a thin whole wheat crust.. Kept the hydration quite high, to achieve those bubbles in the crown. Pretty happy, however, I have to find a better system of transferring the pizza from the peel to the tiles. This awkward transfer resulted in some misshapen pizzas, but who's grading? Oh yeah, you guys are.
John
Ahh, summer...
First one was a simple Bocconcini, Tomato and Basil.
Next was a Greek pizza with spinach, garlic, feta, greek oregano and tomato.
Crown crust bubbling. Not as extreme as I was after, but still not bad for a first attempt.
Comments
very nice pizza John. Great for summer time grilling. If you want round pizza instead of home made rustic, I say order from Papa John's instead of baking at John's :-) The best pizza I can make at home is on the gas grill since it gets 150 F hotter than the oven at 650 F.
ust put the stone in it and crank it up. We par bake the crust for 2 minutes, turn it over while taking it off the grill and then load it up with the sauce and toppings very fast and back on the stone. Comes out super every time and cooks very fast.
Nice grilling! Summer up in BC must be lovely and cool!!!!
Good point dabrowny. I agree. I still do have to make the transition smoother though. The dough bunched up but luckily I was able to stretch it out slightly before the dough stiffened up on the tiles.
Right now it is quite mild due to the week of rain we had last week. Share some heat man!
Thanks for the comments.
John
Nice pie John. Got any picks of the bottom of the crust? I've been meaning to buy a new BBQ for the summer. If I do I'll pick up some tiles. Could you build the tiles on the entire grate or do you need lots of airflow? I tried some pizzas on my new soapstone in the oven. They did pretty well I thought. I think great pizza can be attained at different baking temps but then changes need to be made in the dough. I worked with what I'd say is dry (70%) pizza dough made with a poolish and it was of my best crusts yet. I think this dough wouldn't work as well at a higher temp and I'd need to up the hydration. How fast did your pizza cook? How long is the preheat for this? Okay Okay sorry no more questions
Nice baking
josh
Hey Josh thanks for the comments. Actually, no, I realized too late that I didn't get any bottom photos. Turned out nice and evenly baked though. I actually have enough tiles to cover the entire grate except for about 3 inches on one side. There is really no need for me to do that unless I want to make very large pizzas. I decided to double up the tiles one on top of each other as I was afraid that maybe the thin tiles would have caused the bottoms to burn. Turns out, I didn't even have to turn down the flame at all. I had all three burners at full. I realize now that my grill is not as powerful as I thought it was. The pizzas took about 10 minutes to cook to my desired doneness. I preheated the tiles covered for about 20 minutes. I think next time, I will use a trick I learned when grilling meats that I want an extra good char on. What I do, is take some oil and drizzle some over the burner shields. This causes quite a good localized flareup. I noticed that the extra flames result in a huge jump in temperature. Next time, I will do this trick just before I load up the pizza so it gets in at a super high heat.
Feel free to ask away!
John
Hi John
Wow! That pizza looks great.
Our summer will be months away. We are in middle of winter right now in Melbourne. Great for baking in house though.
Your garden is very nice, too.
Annie
Thank you Annie. We haven't had a chance to get more flower baskets and herb pots yet. That usually makes the backyard look extra nice. We are lucky to have the summers we do, I just wish it got a bit hotter. By July/August we usually see temperatures around the 28 degrees celcius (82 farenheit) to 32 (90).
John
Yum. Delicious Pizzas, John!
I like your method of proofing the pizza dough in a pan.
You backyard is like mini-heaven :)
-Khalid
Thank you so much Khalid. I like the method as well, except that when I took them out to shape, they were slightly stuck and melded together. Even though they were well coated in oil, next time I will have to seperate them with a small piece of plastic wrap.
If heaven was this small, we would be in big trouble ;)
John
pizza looks great. and yes i do agree with Khalid your backyard is like heaven on earth to me. beautiful lucious green. what a place to have to enjoy a great pizza cook out :)
Malaysia and Singapore is facing bad harzadous haze from our neighbouring country, Indonesia forrest burning. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/worst-haze-shifts-singapore-malaysia-19466046#.UcbdAzQ3CSo
schools are shut down and we are adviced to stay indoor :(
evon
Thank you Evon. I am sorry to hear your country is going through those hardships. Your comments remind me of when I was a child and Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980. I remember the skies were all grey and ash was on the ground and cars.
As soon as the skies clear up for you, you should get some good outdoor fun on your schedule.
Take care.
John
Those are some great looking pies John. I usually let my dough balls rise overnight in the frige in oiled zip loc bags. I find this works the best for me. I have a recipe for a grilled pizza dough that comes out great. You bake it first completely befor putting any toppings on. It's not your normal type pizza bit with some fresh mozzarella it's amazing. It's from Peter Reinharts pizza book I think.
Hey Ian.
This formula is actually an adaption from Peter Reinhart's Neo-Neopolitan style pizza dough. I added 50% whole wheat flour to the recipe and a bit more hydration. Refrigerated overnight. I think they turned out great. As mentioned before, I have to figure a better way of transferring from peel to tiles. I used a makeshift system. Back of a cookie sheet covered in corn meal. The first one, I forgot the corn meal part and as you could imagine, was very difficult to slide off to the tiles.
I do like the idea of par bakign the crust to make this step easier.
Thanks for the comments :)
John
I use parchment paper when baking pizza all the time. I have a charcoal webber kettle grill that I use my special pizza set-up which I can't recall the name of at the moment. It allows me to get the temperature over 700 F close to 800 F. You can also buy a mesh pizza screen or metal one and bake the dough on that for the first minute and then slide it off once the dough is set up, or use parchment paper and just remove that also once it is set-up. Never had any issues with the parchment paper but everytime I try and use a peel with semolina it gets stuck and you can hear me cursing all the way across the great white way!
Ian, yes!! Thank you for reminding me of parchment paper! I was thinking about using that for pizzas ever since I realized how well it did with my bread transfers into my roaster! I completely forgot to use it. Now I am set for my next pizza bake :) Thanks a bunch!
Damn, I love this site.
John
I wouldn't have thought to make pizza on the grill. Great idea! Those quarry tiles look handy. Where did you get them? -Varda
Hi Varda. I wish I could say it was my idea, but pizza connoisseurs have been using grills for years. Us unfortunate ones that do not own a traditional Forno oven or WFO, we have to improvise.
I picked up the tiles at a local tile warehouse store. Very cheap too. I believe about 14 tiles 6" x 6" for about $6.00?
If you don't use a pizza stone, I would suggest picking these up. Much cheaper and you can make them fit your oven or grill, etc.
John
That looks a delicious pizza John. We needs a wfo when you can make them like that?
Thanks, I agree. Much cheaper and works nicely. I appreciate the comment!
John
and what a great ideer. I've tried the more horrowing and terrifying straight-onto-the-scorching-grate pizza, but never thought of doing what you did. Think I'll give it a whirl. I also have a big hunk of steel to lay over the grate for another option.
Hi Grind. I used to do that as well. It always turned out a disaster. No actually, once it turned out half decent. The bottoms are very difficult to keep from burning. I always wanted those nice charry blisters. Finally, I came up with this method and it works! Along with Ian's hint of using parchment paper as a transfer tool, it is a perfect system for me.
Hope it works out for you!
John
hunk of flat steel tp make naan and other flat breads like pita on the grill.Just turn the pita over 30 seconds after it hits the steel so that it puffs up in the middle rather than being thicker on one side. It's a good way to make close to real naan with out having the oven,
thanks. I'm a big fan of naan bread.