Yeast Bread On The Grill? Why Not!
My husband’s supposition is that any food source can be grilled. It just takes a little imagination and a fanaticism for cooking over an open flame.
I swear we aren’t cavemen.
It looks better like this.
Since we’ve met, I’ve come to embrace his philosophy and have successfully grilled whole eggplant for baba ghanoush, snacked on fire-roasted popcorn and most recently barbecued a bacon-wrapped head of cabbage until it turned soft and smoky.
But when he suggested I try my hand at baking yeast bread on the grill, I balked.
Years ago, I decided to cook pizza on the grill. I dutifully stretched my homemade dough over hot coals and was rewarded with an uber thin, cracker-like crust that could barely hold a topping. It wasn’t worth the effort.
Besides, that’s hardly the same as a loaf.
But, of course, he had piqued my interest. I searched my brain and dug out my old notes from culinary school. Not one of my baking classes even broached the subject. In theory, it sounded like it would work. Isn’t a closed grill basically just hot, dry heat — the same as an oven?
My biggest problem was figuring out how to regulate the heat. Game to give it a try, I opted to make naan bread, a free-formed yeast loaf, flatter by nature and easier to work with.
I shaped a garlicky batch of dough into rounds and left them to rise. I heated up the grill and…
It worked!
The little breads were beautiful and tasted great. We sliced them open, warm off the grill and threw together a panini-type sammy that was incredible.
Encouraged by my success, I whipped up a batch of orange, cinnamon bread and tossed in some cranberries for good measure. Not willing to sacrifice the whole batch to the grill gods (in case of a disaster), I divided the dough between two miniature bread pans.
One went into the oven; the other got chucked on the grill.
This just seemed weird.
The loaf in the oven was baked to a golden brown in twenty minutes, but the loaf on the grill looked pale and started to collapse. It took another fifteen minutes on the grate before it was finished.
The crumb of the bread was just as delicate, but the pale factor was a little unappetizing. Still, it didn’t go to waste, so I considered it a reasonable success.
The experiment was worth it. I will definitely make the naan bread again — but my regular loaves will stay in the house where they belong.
What motivates you to try new things? Did your last experiment work? —Karen