How to Pre-Cook Pizza Flatbread on Your Grill with a Pizza Steel
By Robert Brown
![How to Pre-Cook Pizza Flatbread on Your Grill with a Pizza Steel](http://pizzori.com/cdn/shop/articles/Grilled_Pizza_Flatbread_-_Balsamic_Drizzle_2_1.jpg?v=1714762650&width=1500)
Summary
Summer, a time for being outside, relaxing in the sun, and firing up that grill!
The last thing you want to do during the heat of summer is preheat your oven as high as it’ll go for an hour and bake off some pizzas indoors.
Let’s take advantage of your grill and put a pizza steel in it!
Grilled pizza, due to how a grill heats, is never going to be the kind of pizza that comes out of your oven. As there isn’t any heat coming directly from the top of the grill, your approach to pizza and how you cook it needs to change.
You’ll need to create a hybrid pizza that shares characteristics of your typical round pizza with a raised rim while having some similarities to a typical flatbread.
The long summer days provide plenty of time for fun, which means you won’t want to bother with a complicated pizza recipe.
Here you’ll find an unfussy dough that can be made in the late morning or early afternoon and be ready for your grill the same night.
Ingredient List
Makes 4 dough balls approximately 280g in weight for 10”-12” diameter pizzas
Ingredient | How much |
Water | 425g |
Flour** | 654g |
Instant Dry Yeast | 5g |
Sugar | 10g |
Olive oil | 33g |
Salt | 16g |
**This recipe was developed using All Purpose Flour but would be successful with Bread Flour as well.
Why grams, and not cups?
The weight of one cup of flour can vary up to 20 percent and this variance can completely change the intended final product.
Weighing your ingredients ensures that your dough comes out consistently each and every time.
Recipe Overview
Hand Mix (recommended):
Stand Mixer:
Make Dough Balls
Preheat Gas Grill
*An infrared thermometer is your friend here
Shape Your Pizza
*Generally, you should NEVER use a rolling pin to shape pizza dough as it eliminates all the gas bubbles you worked so hard to create through fermentation.
However, as this pizza will initially be baked untopped, you need to avoid creating a pizza “pillow.”
The dough docker or fork punctures also facilitate in lessening unwanted rise while the dough bakes.
Because you first shaped the pizza with a rim before rolling and docking, the finished pizza will have a raised rim somewhat similar to oven baked pizzas.
Grill Your Pizza
*Grills do not have a top heating element like a home oven or pizza oven. Therefore, it is the ambient heat of the grill that melts the cheese and warms your toppings.
Pizza sauce won’t thicken like it would in an oven so if it is on the thinner side, it can be a good idea to thicken it slightly on the stovetop. Cook all other ingredients before placing them on your pizza - meats and vegetables.
**Grilled pizzas that have additional post-bake ingredients are often more aesthetically pleasing and delicious.
Basil, arugula, cilantro, burrata, parmesan, olive oil, and BBQ sauce are all common post-bake ingredients depending on the pizza you may be making.
In-Depth Explainers
A Note on Gas Grills
A note on gas grills: Gas grills are all built differently with varying burner configurations. This recipe was developed with a 4-burner gas grill that has burners that run vertically.
If possible, always have your steel centered in the grill with the burners directly below and to the side of it.
If you have a 3 burner set-up with burners that run horizontally or in another configuration that isn’t vertically, experiment with what burners can be turned off before topping your pizza while still melting the cheese.
You want to be able to maintain heat without burning the bottom of the pizza. An infrared thermometer is affordable and will help you greatly in your pizza journeys.
Ideally you’d want to launch with a steel temperature of approximately 650F-665F.
Visit @rubofthekitchen on instagram
Leave a comment
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.