Pizza on the Grill

Two methods, two pizzas

Indirect, on a stone or steel, lid down. You are making an oven. Coals banked to the sides or only the outer burners lit, the surface over the unlit middle, lid closed. This produces a pizza much like an oven pizza, only hotter - most grills will hold a surface at 600 to 700 F, which is well past what a domestic oven can do.

Direct, on the grate, no stone. A completely different technique and a completely different result. The dough goes straight onto oiled bars, cooks on one side in about 90 seconds, gets flipped, and is topped on the already-cooked face. Grill-marked, thin, smoky, closer to a flatbread. Genuinely good, and not a substitute for the first method.

Method one: indirect, with a stone

1. Put the stone on a cold grate, over the part of the grill that will not be lit. Never onto a hot grate - that gradient is how stones crack.
2. Light the outer burners, or bank the coals to the sides. Nothing directly under the stone.
3. Close the lid and give it 25 to 30 minutes. Both grill and stone come up together.
4. Check the surface with an infrared thermometer, not the lid gauge - which reads air at the top of the dome and runs well above the stone.
5. Launch, close the lid, and check at three minutes. At 650 F a pizza is done in four to six minutes, and it will need turning because a grill is far less even than an oven.
6. Leave the stone on the grate to cool. A hot stone onto a cold worktop is the second-commonest way to break one.

Method two: direct on the grate

1. Get the grill hot and the bars clean. Medium-high on gas, coals ashed over on charcoal.
2. Stretch the dough thin, and brush one side with oil.
3. Lay it oiled-side down straight onto the bars. It will not stick if the bars are hot and clean.
4. Sixty to ninety seconds, until the underside is marked and it lifts freely.
5. Flip it. Top the cooked side, working fast - everything goes on a base that is already half-done.
6. Close the lid for two to three minutes to melt the cheese, and watch it. It goes from done to burned quickly.

Keep the toppings light and pre-cooked. There is no time for anything raw to cook, and no bottom heat left to drive off water.

Cast iron, on a grill

A cast iron pizza pan is arguably the better grill surface, for one reason: it cannot crack. A grill is a harsher thermal environment than an oven, it lives outdoors, and it gets moved around while hot. Cast iron does not care about any of that, and thermally it sits within about 5 percent of carbon steel.

The cost is the same as it is indoors: a rim, which makes launching from a peel awkward.

The mistakes

Lid up. Without the lid you have a griddle, not an oven - the base burns and the top never cooks. Lid down for the indirect method, always.

Direct flame under the stone. Covered in why pizza stones crack.

Trusting the lid gauge. It reads air at the top of the dome. The stone can be 150 F cooler.

Too much topping. A grill runs hotter and faster than an oven, so there is less time for anything to cook or dry out.