Grill Bread

Grill bread is sort of like a pretzel and sort of like bread and a lot like crack. I dare you to take just one bite. One friend of mine – who particularly relishes its salty pretzel-like quality – once begged me not to make it. She was on a reducing plan and found the siren call of the grill bread too much to resist. On her, I take pity. For the rest of you: Enjoy.

Grill Bread

Make the dough a day ahead of time, stretch it out ahead of time and cover or simply stretch it right before you plop it on the grill.

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 cup milk

6 1/2 – 7 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon kosher salt

Olive oil for brushing

Coarse salt for sprinkling

Rosemary for sprinkling

Dissolve yeast in 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water. Stir in 1 cup lukewarm milk.

Stir in flour and salt until a dough forms (this is great to do in a standing mixer with a dough hook, if you have one). If doing this by hand, you may need to turn the dough out onto a counter and knead it to work in all the flour.

Lightly oil a large bowl and put the dough in it. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let sit to let dough rise until doubled in bulk, 8 hours or overnight.

Punch down the dough and let it sit another hour.

Meanwhile, brush your cooking grate with vegetable oil. Heat your grill to medium to medium-hot. You should be able to hold your hand about an inch over the cooking grate for two minutes second or so before it just feels way too hot. Don’t worry too much about this, however. Grill bread isn’t fussy.

Divide the dough into ten pieces. Work with one piece at a time and stretch it into a disk of some sort – oblong is cool, round is fine, crazy-shaped is always popular. Lay whatever shaped dough disk you have on the hot grill. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough.

Once all dough is on the grill, brush each disk with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and Rosemary, if you’re using them. Cook until grill marks form and the disks release easily from the grill. I’m not going to give you a time frame because I know nothing about your grill or fire-making skills or how windy and cooled off it is on your balcony where the grill is. This could take 5 minutes or 15 – but that is not a time frame to follow! Just hang with the bread a bit, when it releases easily and has grill marks, flip it. Flip each grill bread and brush the cooked side with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Cook until grill marks form on the second side and grill breads are cooked through. Serve hot or at least warm.