Bake Outdoors and Beat the Heat
Do you want to avoid baking yourself out of your own kitchen on hot summer days? With a little trial and error, I was able to quite successfully bake bread in an outdoor barbeque grill. See the short video documentary.
With summer temperatures running obnoxiously high on occasion, the appeal of indoor baking starts to wane a bit for me. The energy conservationist (and cheapskate) in me finds it a little painful to watch our central air conditioner struggling to compete with the kitchen oven. I also enjoy grilling pizza so I sometimes combine the events. There’s an element of adventure in outdoor baking you may find appealing.
My grill is a pretty basic model and not thermostatically controlled, so it took some practice to get familiar with where to set the flame height and where to position the bread in relation to the flames. The most important thing I found was not to have too much heat too close to the bottom of the bread or it will scorch. That was easily solved by cranking up the side burners while keeping the center burners, directly under the bread, on medium.
For the bread to bake uniformly, I think it’s necessary to bake it in some kind of covered baking vessel, ala the no knead baking method. A cast iron Dutch oven ought to work well, but definitely do NOT use a La Cloche clay baker as the base is too fragile for grilling purposes. As you can see in the video, I use a heavy baking stone with a Cloche lid over it. This works great but even a heavy duty baking stone should not come into direct contact with flames or it may crack. The stone I use is specifically designed for grilling and comes with a flame diverter (a metal tray the stone rests in) that prevents cracking.
Even if your grill has a thermometer on it, it’s probably not going to give you a very reliable reading. The use of a simple instant read probe type thermometer takes the guesswork out of determining your total baking time. Wait until the internal temperature of the bread is in the 200-205 degree range before taking it out to cool.
If you have any experience with bread or pizza grilling, I’d love to hear about it.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Read the whole story of Marianne’s Big Green bread baking experience.
Thanks Marianne!
With the recent hot weather, I decided to try baking no-knead bread in my Big Green Egg charcoal grill. I used a pizza stone and covered the bread for the first 20 minutes with a clay terracotta flowerpot. Worked like a charm!
*Click to enlarge
I have been making pizzas on my gas outdoor grill for years.. the resulting pizzas have gotten raves for many many years..
I will post a picture the next time I fire one up
I do use a large heavy pizza stone, and even a mesh grill between the pizza dough and the grill grates..
havent tried bread yet.. but I will soon
nice work everyone
Hi – I broke down and purchased the Fibrament pizza stone for the grill and have been using it mostly for pizzas and No-knead Bread with good results (click on “Maria” link above)! I wanted a good method for baking pizzas and such on the grill instead of the brick set-up I had before; I couldn’t get consistent (and good) results on the pizza.
For bread, I heated stone and grill for 10-15 minutes with side burners on high-ish, the middle on medium, dropped the bread dough onto the stone, and covered with a stainless steel bowl. Baked with the grill lid down for 20 minutes. Removed bowl and let bake for another 7-10 minutes. The one I baked last night has mysteriously disappeared from the house (I think my husband took it to work to share the results).
Also, I know this isn’t the forum for it, but I used the stone on the grill yesterday to bake a rustic peach tart with very good results. A very versatile baking tool indeed! Thanks for all of the videos and tips.
Nice going Maria. I love your post. That’s the kind of tweaking that seems to be necessary for each particular grill. But it’s sure worth it.
Folks – click on Maria’s name to see her flickr post of her grill baked bread picture.
After a few tries, I think I finally did it. Here’s what worked for our grill: Plain old bricks on grill (4-6). Grill heated, with lid down, for 10 minutes. Grill has 3 burners. Two side burners on near high, middle burner on medium (as suggested in a previous post). Cast iron griddle or comal place directly on bricks. Set-up heated for another 10 minutes, lid down. Dough dropped onto comal, then covered with a stainless steel bowl, and baked for 20 minutes, lid down. Bowl removed, then bread baked for another 7 minutes with lid down on grill. Notes: I live at 8,200 feet 2500 m) altitude. Also, light, but steady rain outside, temperature 55 F (13 C) at time of baking.
Hi,
We’ve baked bread and pies on our charcoal grill using 8″ clay flower pot dishes (from HomeDepot). The pies were perfect — better than we get in an oven. The bread was a little black on the bottom, so I will try the suggestion of putting bricks underneath.
- Jeff
Good to hear from you, Malcolm. And thanks for the added tips. Using commonly available brick to keep the pot/stone away from direct heat sounds like a winner.
Hi Eric:
Excellent videos !!
I’ve been baking bread successfully on a gas barbecue all summer, both in a covered pot and on a stone, covered and uncovered.
I arrange four bricks (ordinary house bricks) on the grill, and place the pot or baking stone on them, which keeps the pot/stone away from direct heat. My covered bakers of choice are the unglazed clay loaf shape, or an unglazed clay tagine (equivalent to La Cloche). If I want to bake on the stone and cover the dough, I use an inverted large pyrex or stainless steel mixing bowl as the cloche.
The baking temperature and time is the same as for an indoor oven.
Thanks for sending the dry sourdough starter. It revived perfectly, and adds a complex depth of flavor to the bread.