Ever wondered how to make a grilled pizza? It’s simple if you have a pizza stone! Your grill can easily become a smoky, sensational place to cook your pizza. It’s the perfect way to enjoy a summer evening… whip up some dough for crust, purchase a few toppings, and presto! You’ve got a pizza party. My family is enjoying the process a few times a month now, we make it a group activity. Everybody likes their pizza different… my favorite is marinara, mozzarella, goat cheese and sliced ripe tomatoes topped with fresh basil (and some hot red pepper flakes to spice things up a bit!). My husband likes sliced jalapenos on his. We all prefer a thin crust; I’ve shared our go-to thin crust recipe below.
Here are the supplies you’ll need to grill a pizza:
– A grill (naturally!) – gas or charcoal grills work equally well
– Pizza Peel (large pizza spatula), or another moveable slick surface (like a cutting board) for transferring the pizza on and off of the heated pizza stone
– Spatula (large and wide is best) for helping to nudge/guide the pizza on and off the pizza stone
There are dough recipes that you can cook directly on the grill, but I find them heavy and overly doughy. We much prefer the thinner crust recipe shared here, which requires a pizza stone, because it allows us to enjoy more slices and highlights the toppings. Thicker crusts tend to leave me feeling overly full, I can only stomach a slice or two before I’m done. Thin crust means I can enjoy small slices of lots of different pizzas, as well as a side salad, without overdoing it!
If by chance you don’t have a grill or a pizza stone, you can also bake pizza in your oven. I’ve provided instructions for that method below as well. If you’re keeping kosher and you’re concerned about cooking cheesy pizza on your meat grill, the oven method is an excellent choice.
What’s your favorite way to top a grilled pizza?
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Thin Pizza Crust
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup warm water not hot!
- 1 teaspoon sugar honey or agave will also work well
- 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil plus more for greasing bowl
- Sauce (4-6 tbsp) and toppings of your choice
NOTES
Instructions
To make dough
- Combine water, sugar, and yeast in a small bowl. Let sit until frothy, about 10 minutes. This will activate the yeast-- it should look foamy. If it doesn't, your yeast may be expired... go get some fresh yeast!
- In a large bowl, combine flour and kosher salt. Add the yeast mixture along with the olive oil and mix until thoroughly combined.
- Transfer dough to a floured surface. Knead the dough for 5 minutes and shape into a ball.
- Rinse out the bowl where you mixed the dough ingredients and grease it with olive oil (or cooking oil spray). Place the dough into the greased mixing bowl and turn to coat.
- Cover with a warm wet towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 1 ½ - 2 hours, or until it has doubled in size.
- Preheat grill or oven at this time-- details below. Punch down the dough ball down flat and place on a well floured surface. To roll out, start in the middle and roll towards the edges, giving a quarter turn with each back-and-forth motion. Add more flour as needed to prevent sticking. Roll out to roughly 10”-11" across.
- Place the crust on a well floured moveable, slick cutting board or onto a well floured large pizza spatula-- this will help you to transfer the pizza to a hot pizza stone once it is topped. It's very important to flour the moveable surface well so that the crust doesn't stick when you transfer it.
- Brush the surface of the crust with a little olive oil.
- Now you're ready for toppings! I've found that this crust works best with 4-6 tablespoons of sauce and a few toppings... it's a thin crust, so best not to overload it. Whatever sauce you use, make sure it's nice and thick-- watery sauces will penetrate the crust and cause it to go limp, which will make it harder to transfer to the oven.You can bake this recipe in the oven or on your grill. Either way, you should have a pizza stone preheated and ready to go before you cook. The pizza stone will ensure that your crust bakes evenly and has a nice crispness.
Instructions for cooking your pizza on the grill
- Insert pizza stone onto your grill, close the cover, and preheat over medium flames. You should start the grill heating when your dough has doubled in size before you start rolling out the crust. This will save time, and you don't want your toppings sitting on the uncooked crust for an extended period of time, or it will go soggy.
- Once everything is heated, slide your assembled pizza directly onto the pizza stone (or baking sheet). This can be tricky; you may need the help of another small spatula to guide the crust onto the heated stone. Having a well floured surface will help it slide with ease. Close the grill cover.
- Grill the pizza for 10-12 minutes, or to desired doneness. I grill it until the outer edges are golden brown all the way around the crust.
Instructions for cooking your pizza in the oven
- Instructions for traditional oven - insert pizza stone (or sheet pan if you don't have one) into the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. You should start the oven heating when your dough has doubled in size before you start rolling out the crust. This will save time, and you don't want your toppings sitting on the uncooked crust for an extended period of time, or it will go soggy. Once everything is heated, slide your assembled pizza directly onto the pizza stone (or baking sheet). You may need the help of another small spatula to guide the crust onto the heated stone. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or to desired doneness, turning once halfway through cooking. I bake it until the outer edges are golden brown all the way around the crust.
Nutrition
Tori, my wife and i love mediterranean food of all kinds. Your recipes show such care in preparation while usually simple in ingredients and steps. You have become my go-to-guide for tasty, healthy, quality and interesting food. Thank you for your efforts and joy in sharing.
Thanks Henry! So nice of you to take the time to write. 🙂
Hi tori can you tell me how to use spelt flour instead of white flour in this recipe? Thanks for your time.
Have been making pizza in a pizza pronto pizza oven at home using a cold 48 hour fermentation of 00 Caputo flour, salt, yeast and water and having great success. We are visiting family who only have a Weber charcoal grill. I made my dough and it will be ready in 24 hours, bought a pizza stone and an aluminum peel…now to use the grill here. Any tips? Should I have direct heat or indirect? I am used to having temps of between 700 and 800 degrees. My pizzas typically cook in 4 to 5 mins. This grill only goes up to 600 degrees. I am afraid the crust bottom will burn before the top cooks, especially with a 12 minute cook time. Wish me luck!
I have never cooked one on a charcoal grill so I’m not sure what modifications to suggest. If I were trying it out I would probably use indirect heat. Good luck!
Nice recipe Tori. I will be making 3 tonight. fresh walnut pesto, pizza margreat with airloom tomatoes and a 5 cheese pizza with bacon bits. All with flavored garlic, herbs knedded into the dough…Pizza on the grill is fun and I ve had success on the grate as well as on the stone…
It was delicious but I had a problem moving it to pizza stone… I just ordered the pizza spatula… hopefully that makes it easier to transfer
I had the same problem! I tried using flour and or cornmeal on the peel and still it squished together. Tonight I’m going to try a trick I learned at a BBQ store — cut a piece of parchment the EXACT size of your stone (otherwise it will burn). Put the parchment on the peel and make the pizza on the parchment paper. Slide the parchment onto the stone and grill. I’m hoping this works!
I tried this recipe with a new stone, followed all the directions, 450 on a 2 burner grill, baked for 8 min and the bottom was black!!! I was so disappointed!
Pam N.
I’m so sorry to hear that Pam! Different grills heat differently, so it may take some experimentation to figure out what works best for your particular grill. Hope next time turns out better for you!
Hi, I’ve used this recipe for a while now and it always makes an amazing pizza base. I hydrolise my flour first, as has already been said, but I also need much more water for the amount of flour stated. I always mix my dry gradually into the wet first too until it makes a nice playful dough to work with. This does produce a more bouncy base though and not the typical stonebake experience.
Thanks for the recipe!
Nice! One suggestion from a bread baker. If you add oil to the mix right away it can coat flour particles and can produce a cake-like texture. Instead, mix/kneed the flour/salt with the water/yeast and let it set for 5 minutes so the flour fully hydrates. THEN add the oil. Then let it rise. You’ll get a crust that is more like chewy European bread and less cake-like. If you have the time oil & cover the dough and let it hang out in the refrigerator for a few hours before you bring it back out to warm and rise. When it comes to rising bread, time is flavor. A slow rise over time means more flavor. Thanks for the recipe!
Do you recommend mixing it with a paddle, sit and hydrate, then add oil and use a paddle or dough hook?
I have been grilling for years but have never gone down the make the pizza dough and cook a pizza on the grill road. This recipe looks like exactly the type of pizza we like. So I am going to give it a try. Question: What temperature should the water be when adding to the sugar and yeast? The recipe calls for “warm” not “hot” What is the best water temperature range? Does the yeast mixture matter what type of bowl it sits for 10 mins in? and should the bowl be warmed prior to adding the water? Sorry for being so picky but I do know that baking is a very delicate animal to manage sometimes. Any other tips would be helpful. Thank you for this great recipe We look forward to trying it.
Hi Bobby, the water should be lukewarm, it helps the yeast to rise– but not too hot, very hot water will kill it. The bowl doesn’t matter. No need to warm the bowl. Just know that if the yeast doesn’t foam, then it’s not “alive” and it needs to be replaced.
Tori !!!!!! I am soooo full right now! I bought a pizza stone a few years back and never used it I decided to make pizza tonight and I was determined to use the grill. I found this and it was so awesome. its like a brick oven lol. I hve been making bomb dough for years so I just used mine, flour, baking powder, garlic powder, Basil , sugar or honey and a shake of salt. I am not patient enough to wait on yeast. It can out perfect in 12 min. you are a genius I will be doing this often
Great to hear that Bob! 🙂
would love to hear this pizza crust recipe as well!! (:
I would also like the other recipe from Bob. 🙂
I am excited to try Tori’s recipe on our grill. It looks and sounds delicious. I like to make sourdough bread, I wonder if I could use some starter instead of ???? Any suggestions?
I’ve made this several times. It’s a great recipe. I usually triple everything, split the the dough in half, and freeze one half. Thanks for the great recipe Tori!
Casey
So glad you are enjoying it Casey! With spring here I’m excited to break out my pizza stone again 🙂
What temperature do you pre-heat grill with pizza stone? 450 degrees like with oven baking?
The grill is less precise– you can certainly heat it to 450 degrees if you feel like measuring the temp. I usually just light a medium flame, put the pizza stone in, close the grill and heat it up for 10-15 minutes.
Thanks, Tori. So you know, I’m new to baking–hence the novice questions.
Tonight I followed your recipe’s ingredients, etc., but I baked the pie in the oven on a $4 supermarket-purchased non-stick pizza pan made outside the USA. The cheese overcooked before the crust was finished browning, so I removed it early. It was still very good, although more bread-like.
Would you suggest baking the crust for a few minutes (in this scenario) before adding the toppings? Also, does it matter which oven rack the pie bakes on?
Also, if I want to make enough dough for, say 4 pizzas, do I increase all the ingredients proportionately, except the yeast?
I will be trying this tomorrow on the grill using my newly purchased cast iron pizza pan to see how that works out.
Thanks again for the recipe. FYI–it was highly recommended to me by a girl who recently graduated from a prestigious Massachusetts culinary arts school.
Hi David! Great questions. Bake the pizza on a rack placed squarely in the center of the oven for most even results. If you’re still experiencing the over-browning issue, try covering the top of the pizza with foil or parchment when it is browned to your liking, and let the crust continue to brown until done. That simple layer of protection will generally halt the browning process for a few minutes, allowing the crust below to continue cooking. If all else fails you can try pre-baking the crust as you suggest, however I think the above advice should work. As for quadrupling the recipe, I would double the recipe twice (using one packet of yeast for each batch) rather than quadrupling. Enjoy!
Has anyone tried to use cornmeal in place of the flour to enable an easier release of the crust onto the stone? Just wondering if that would work, too?
Absolutely! I use it and it works great.
This is my question too. I would think flour would burn easier then corn meal. I was told to use corn meal, but now I see a lot of recipes using flour, so was wondering which one was better.
This tutorial was super helpful, our pizza turned out great. thank you so much!
I have been wanting to try this for ages, and finally took a leap and ordered a stone and pizza spatula. Your pizzas look awesome. I agree about thin dough, the heavy dough is just too much bread. I want to enjoy the toppings.
great crust! i am used to making sourdough crusts so had no yeast. just added a couple handfulls of starter and adapted accordingly. it was great and u are right about the thin crust servings, i had not realized it. we could eat way more pizza! my favorite is a no-sauce pizza. u cover the dough with sliced romas dot with balls of fresh mozzarella sliced in half and then when it’s done u dot each tomato slice with FRESH pesto.
ciao, laura
1
Hi Tori,
I wanted to know if I can substitute the flour with whole wheat flour, and does anything change?
Thanks,
Ali
Hi Alice, I’ve never used whole wheat with this recipe. I think it would probably be fine, but the texture might suffer a bit. Nothing should change in the cooking process. If it were me I would replace half the flour with whole wheat, not all… but again I haven’t tested it so hesitate to give you more detailed guidance here. Good luck!
We plan on making grilled pizzas for Louisa’s birthday so this is perfect. Thanks for the tips!
or white pizza with broccoli and lots of roasted garlic