Leisureguy commented yesterday that he hadn’t tried pizza from the BBQ yet. When a food lover like Leisureguy who lives in a Mecca of food trends like California hasn’t yet tried BBQ pizza, well sir, its time to talk about BBQ pizza!
Simply put, until you’ve cooked your pizza in the BBQ….you haven’t had “real” pizza as Mr. Italo would say. That’s because the BBQ makes a pizza crust that is about as close to cooking it in a wood oven as you can get. But it does demand a certain know-how which I can supply today, having made pizza in the BBQ a few hundred times.
You will need a “holy” pizza pan, Batman. No, not one blessed by the Church. A pizza pan with holes in the bottom. Readily available in most cooking implement stores.You can use a gas BBQ or a charcoal one.
Make your home-made dough as usual but sized for a thin-crust pizza. Spread it out on the holy pizza pan. With a fork, poke the dough in about 20 places, to avoid the development of large bubbles. Place the pizza pan and dough in the middle of a BBQ which you have preheated at High for about 10 minutes. Temperature should be above 400F if there is a thermometer on the BBQ cover. Close the cover. Every 15 seconds or so, open the cover and rotate the pizza pan. With a spatula, keep raising the crust and have a look to make sure it isn’t burning. The dough will cook very quickly, say in about 3-5 minutes. Now place a second holy pizza pan on top of the pizza and flip it over. The goal is to get the uncooked side onto another pizza pan.
Before putting the pizza into the BBQ again, dress the now cooked and crusty top as desired. My personal favorite: A thin layer of homemade pesto, a few thin slices of fresh tomato, and some slices of freshly-cut fresh mozzarella di buffalo.
Place the pizza back in the BBQ and watch it as previously. You don’t want the crust to burn, although a few dark spots give a nice smoky flavor. For a crispy cheese crust, finish the pizza in the oven broiler for a couple of minutes.
That’s it. Cut and enjoy the best pizza you’ll ever make at home.
Sometimes I don’t want to cook directly on the grill so I had a granite slab made to fit my BBQ. I’ve never tried it but I wonder if woods chips added to the BBQ would add taste to the pizza.
By: Italo on March 26, 2009
at 8:50 pm
A small point , but it’s grilling and not BBQ.
BBQ , is low heat , slow cooking!
Still i’m sure your pizza was tasty! You will have to make me one . It’s a great starter , before you BBQ some racks of ribs.Two grills are nice at this point.
This as the ribs need about three hours or so .
Have you tried dough from a good pizza place ? It can save some time , for drinking beer !
By: Dario on April 4, 2009
at 11:30 pm
If you want to get semantic about it, then we are both wrong, since the word Barbecue has its origins in the French “barbe au cul” which literally means poker-up-the-ass and refers to what we would today call rotisserie grilling.
Yes, we used to buy dough from a good pizza place and it is an excellent alternative, although the Cuisinart method is so easy you can do it faster than actually going to the pizza place!
By: Steve on April 5, 2009
at 8:21 am