Grilled Pizza Dough

The backyard grill is the best pizza oven most Americans will ever own. I've been saying this for decades, and every summer I watch more home cooks discover this truth for themselves. Your charcoal kettle or gas grill reaches temperatures that make your kitchen oven weep with inadequacy. Five hundred degrees, six hundred degrees, sometimes hotter. That's the territory where real pizza happens.

This dough draws from the Italian tradition but embraces the American summer with open arms. High hydration gives you the open, irregular crumb structure of a good Neapolitan crust. The extended fermentation develops complex flavor that quick-rise recipes simply cannot achieve. And when that stretched dough hits the hot grates, something magical occurs: leopard spots of char, a whisper of smoke, and bubbles that puff and blister like a wood-fired pie.

I've served this dough at clambakes in Rhode Island and at ranch cookouts in Hill Country. It works anywhere fire meets summer air. The technique requires attention but not complexity. You'll stretch, you'll grill one side, you'll flip, you'll top, and you'll serve. The whole process takes three minutes once the dough hits the grate. Master this, and you'll never order delivery again.