The Weekender: Baking on Your Gas Grill

Note: It's been my habit to keep from posting serious stuff on the weekends; but when there's something more informal I have to get out, the weekend seems the best time to do it.

The other day it was in the range of 95 degrees in my town, and humid as hell. Since I don't have central air in my home, the best I can do is fight a kind of rearguard action against the heat, shutting blinds and keeping heat-generating activities to a minimum. Since this includes cooking, I often retreat to my backyard grill. But I wanted some bread and had none in the house; and since I had no energy to go out and buy some, I resolved to bake. On the grill.

I checked around the 'net for some tips and found none. None. Was this virgin territory? Had no one thought of this before? I couldn't believe it, but I got to baking anyway (figuring if there was a problem with my idea, there would have been a warning somewhere).

I chose to use my baking stone and an indirect approach: I fired up one of two burners, placed the stone over the unlit one, then closed the lid and waited. I'd hoped to get the stone to about 400 degrees, but my impatience made me throw the loaf on at only about 200. It took about 50% longer to bake (30 minutes vs 20 for this type of loaf), but otherwise was a complete success. Next step: making brick-oven pizza with a liquefied propane grill!

PS: As I was searching for the right image, I found this excellent article on grill-baking!