Turn Your Charcoal Grill Into a Pizza Oven

This weekend, I decided to make grilled pizzas with our High-Hydration Pizza Dough. I have been playing around with grilled pizzas for a few years now, and have been disappointed with the flatbread-like doughs designed to be thrown directly on the grates. This dough is not flatbread-like. It has a beautiful bubbly and irregular crumb, and chews more like an oven-fired pizza, thanks to all that water, which helps with gluten development. I also like that it does well with a long rest in the fridge, so you can make it on Thursday and grill it up on Friday night. Obviously, high-hydration dough is not conducive to grate-only grilling—it will fall right through—but a pizza stone fixes this problem. (Luckily, a friend had recently given me a pizza stone she didn’t want anymore.) Not only does a stone prevent the dough from falling through the grates and into the coals, it ensures a crisp bottom and properly-cooked crumb. (If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can snag one online for around $25.) Once you have a stone, it’s quite easy to cook a good pizza on a basic charcoal grill. I’ve been tempted by dedicated outdoor pizza ovens, but don’t eat quite enough pizza to justify yet another cooking appliance. I also just love my Weber Kettle, and enjoy exploring how versatile it can be. Below is the method I use, but take heed: It has not been tested or officially approved by the Milk Street kitchen. (The dough, however, has been.) Start by heating up a charcoal chimney’s worth of coals. If you made the dough the day before, this is a good time to take it out of the fridge, divide it into rounds, and let it come to room temp, according the recipe. Once the coals are hot and nearly ashed-over, evenly scatter them all over your charcoal grate (the grate under the grilling grate), then add about half a chimney more of unlit coals. This may be overkill, charcoal-wise, but I made four pizzas and it was just the right amount to get them all cooked before the coals started cooling. Set the grill grate over the charcoal grate and place your pizza stone in the center. Be sure to use a pizza stone that doesn’t cover the entire grill, as you don’t want to block the air flow and heat—the heat reflected back from the inside of the lid is what melts the cheese. Let the stone preheat for about an hour while the dough comes to room temperature. Let the grill get nice and hot—it should get above 500℉. Grab a baking sheet, flip it over, and place a sheet of parchment on top. Scatter some cornmeal on top of the parchment. Flour your hands well and carefully stretch and shape your dough on the parchment. You will not be able to shape this dough into a perfect circle. The high level of hydration makes it quite liquidy, so don’t feel bad if you end up with oblong or kidney-shaped pizzas. 

Sauce the dough with our Pizza Sauce (I like that ours has a little kick, thanks to red pepper flakes) and scatter on a topping or two. Don’t overdo it with a ton of toppings or cheese. A delicate hand will ensure everything finishes cooking at the same time. Brush the edges of the crust with a little olive oil. If you are adding any vegetables, fruit, steak, chicken or ground meat, be sure to cook it first. Pepperoni and similar charcuterie does fine without a pre-cook. Working quickly, remove the dome lid from your grill and slide the pizza—parchment and all—onto the stone. The parchment will burn but that’s OK; the cornmeal will keep it from fusing to the crust. (I have read that you can cook it on a stone without parchment—just scatter the cornmeal directly on the stone—but it was impossible to transfer the dough to the bare stone without a pizza peel.)

Close the grill up and cook, undisturbed, for 10-15 minutes. I preferred the longer-cooked pies, but you can always check at 10 minutes and pull it or cook it a little longer, depending on your taste. Remove the pizza from the stone, then close the the grill and let it heat back up while you prepare your next pie. Repeat until you are out of dough.

Want to hear more from Claire? Sign up for her weekly newsletter here.

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.

And if you're looking for more Milk Street, check out our livestream cooking classes with our favorite chefs, home cooks and friends for global recipes, cooking methods and more.

Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.