If you’re not up to trying the non-wheat variety of pizza dough, you’re sort-of missing out when it comes to grilling. I’ve had better luck using gluten-free dough on my grill than the standard pizza dough, as it shrinks less, retains more of that grill smoky flavor, and has the perfect crunch.
There’s really not a whole lot more to this “recipe” than how you’d make a traditional pizza. As cliché as it sounds, the key with grilling a pizza is all in the technique.
In this particular recipe, I originally used Gillian’s Foods pizza dough, which comes frozen in a ball. Another dough I’ve used before, Nature’s Highlights, doesn’t work well at all on a grill — I wouldn’t recommend trying it at all. The first key to using Gillian’s on the grill is to make sure you thaw the dough out on your counter in the morning, if you’ll be cooking that night. If for some reason you’ve lost that window of opportunity, the second best way to thawing the dough is to keep it in its bag and immerse it in hot water until thawed. It’ll be a little wet that way, but you can just use spelt flour when you roll it out to prevent sticking.
Since originally posting this recipe, I’ve learned to make a perfect wheat-free, low-gluten spelt pizza dough myself, which is incredibly easy to do.
You’ll want to roll the dough into two crusts, as one huge one will simply not fit on the grill. I use a rolling pin on a large wooden pizza peel, dusting with spelt flour to prevent sticking to the wood or rolling pin. Make sure they’re not too thin, as you may break them when trying to get them on the grill.
Once I have both crusts rolled out, I get the grill going full blast with the cover closed. Get that baby up over 500-degrees. This is just to get things ready for later.
Once the grill is good and hot, I carefully lay the dough right on the main grill rack and turn the temperature down to its lowest setting. Spray or paint the dough with olive oil, close the lid and wait about five minutes. Check the underside of the pizza every so often. You want to get it so it’s a nice brown color with black grill marks, but make sure it’s not overdone. If anything, you want it underdone at this point. Once they’re done, take them off the grill and flip them over so the cooked side is on top.
Next up, we actually cook all of the ingredients either on the grill or inside on a pan. If you don’t cook the ingredients at least half-way to doneness before dressing the pizza, everything will be way underdone, unless you like it al-dente. In this recipe, I grilled the sausages and yellow pepper rings. The tomato slices were put on raw later.
The pesto we used was homemade, traditional basil pesto. Spread that evenly over the now cooked side of the pizza doughs. Don’t use too much pesto – it’s not necessary to have every inch covered in thick, green stuff. As long as olive oil is spread everywhere, you’re golden.
Put the rest of the ingredients on the pizza (sausage, peppers, and tomato slices), then crumble goat cheese over each crust. Return pizza’s to the grill and close the cover. Check the underside of the pizza every so often, and this time you’ll want it done a little more than the first time. You just don’t want the crust turning black. Remove from grill with spatula and pizza peel.
Now, as for slicing a pizza, I highly, highly recommend ditching that pain-in-the-arse pizza wheel for a rocking pizza knife. Perfect slices every time, and no more pushing all the junk all over the pizza when trying to use a wheel.
(Most of the content originally published by me on Slashfood, September 26, 2005)
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Apr 13, 2009 @ 13:07 EST5EDT
