Baking bread onto the grill is one of the neatest hacks we know. Once you master your grill, cooking is as simple as using your oven to bake your favorite dish.
There’s a plethora of possibilities for making use of the grill. You may take freshly made bread with you to the campsite, the lodge, or the next family get-together. Baking outdoors in the fresh spring air is a great way to take a break from the kitchen. (When the aroma of freshly made bread drifts over the fence, observe how the neighbors avert their gaze upwind.) And you won’t have to turn up the oven’s temperature this summer. Last but not least, in the event of a prolonged disaster that knocks out the electricity, you may be the only person in town with access to fresh bread.
A covered grill is ideal for baking a wide variety of foods. (Use a big inverted pot as a makeshift lid if the barbecue doesn’t have one.) Covered areas behave similarly to ovens in that heat rises & circulates due to the lack of drafts. Wood, charcoal, or gas may all be used to generate heat. Gas is our preferred fuel source since it is more manageable and doesn’t leave a smoky flavor in the bread. Bread should be kept over the fire, where it will cook the quickest. We have a secondary shelf on our grill for roasting potatoes and other such foods.
Although any bread mix or recipe will work, we utilized Old-Fashioned White Bakery mixes for this presentation. We followed the packaging instructions and made a mixture. After it had risen, we shaped some of it into hamburger buns, some into dinner rolls, and others into oval country loaves.
The key to properly grilled bread is in timing and temperature. Even though the grill’s heat retention may be affected by weather and wind, having a thermometer built into your barbecue is a huge help. Heat to the point that is specified on the packaging or in the recipe should you have a thermometer. If not, assume. We have faith that after a few rounds of loaves on the grill, you’ll have it down pat.
Depending on the size and temperature, you may expect rolls and buns to bake in 15–20 minutes and loaves to bake in 20–30 minutes. It’s OK to take the odd peep to check how your loaf of bread is coming along while it bakes.
Just right for that quarter pounder, we baked a dozen extra-large hamburger buns. After shaping the buns like dinner rolls, press them flat many times to get an appearance similar to the one on the left. (That’s cornmeal you see on the bottom of the pan.) In other words, cover and let it rise.
We used an egg white wash (1 egg white + 1 tablespoon of water) on the buns just before popping them in the oven. We followed it up by coating them in sesame seeds. We grilled them with the lid partially open for around 18 minutes.
Twenty rolls, each weighing in at 2.5 ounces, were baked in a pan measuring 8 1/2 by 15 inches.
Two rustic loaves were baked from the same batch of flour. You can see the split in one side of this loaf is the result of our forgetting to slit the tops in order to let the steam. Don’t make the same mistake we made and cut slashes two or three eighth of an inch deep into the top surface of the bread before baking.
To further assist you, here are some other suggestions:
Bread should be baked before burgers. While everything else is in the oven, you may let the bread cool. Grease that burns on the grill’s bottom makes it more difficult to regulate the heat, and the resulting soot discolors the bread.
Consider using a big food-grade plastic bag to act as greenhouse if you need to let your bread rise outdoors, where the ambient temperature may be lower than indoors or where winds may swirl about the bread. The bread dough and pan may be placed inside the bag, which is then gently inflated and sealed. Place the bag & the loaves in a warm, sunny spot if the temperature outside is on the chilly side.
o Unlike ovens, grills don’t do a good job of redistributing the heat. To prevent the bread turning burning on the bottom, use two pans & a wire rack to create a gap between them.
Turn the pan toward 180 degrees halfway through baking time if your loaf of bread is browning unevenly.
The bottom of a loaf of bread often gets burned. If necessary, raise the bread over the flames to keep it at a safe distance.