Baking on Grill without charbroiled mess

Preparing bread on a grill is not an easy task.  If you're trying to use a Dutch oven get yourself a Dutch oven that is designed to be used on an open fire (it has short legs) and rest the legs on fire bricks or other spacers so that there is no direct heat conduction to the Dutch oven per se. 

Do a Google search on cooking with a Dutch oven to get some idea of how this might work.  Here's a start:

http://www.christianhomekeeper.com/cook.html

Just remember that, when cooking over an open fire where wood or other solid fuel is used, the Dutch doesn't actually contact the coals.  Rather, it is spaced so that the coals provide radiant heat without contacting the body of the oven itself.

The temperature inside the grill should be whatever your oven would be.  Do you have a thermometer so you know what the temperature is?

I worked on appliances in another life and used an electronic temperature gauge to test and calibrate ovens.

The oven thermostat cycles the bake element (electric) or burner (gas) off and on, and maintains an AVERAGE temperature of whatever you set it , typically within 10%.  So, if you set your thermostat at, say, 350 degrees, using a fast reacting temperature probe, you would see the temperature rise to somewhere around 385 (350 plus 10%, or 35 degrees), then cycle off.  The temperature will drop to around 315 degrees (350 minus 10%, or 35 degrees), then cycle back on and rise again - it will continue this as long as you are baking.  That's why you hear the "click" sound every few minutes - it's the thermostat cycling off and on.

And, while the computer on your oven will beep to tell you it's preheated in 8 or 10 minutes, it should really preheat for 30 or 40 minutes so the entire oven cavity is uniformly heated.

Your grill will not cycle that way, but will maintain a constant, if not rising, temperature.  So you need to know what the temperature is.

That $4 thermometer you have in your oven may or may not be accurate.  And it will be slow reacting to changes in temperature.

Hi Rob,

I guess we Southerners have all tried to do this. I have had some success baking off direct flame.  I don't want to brag, but I've got 4 burners so I turn the far left and far right on- very low- after I have preheated a bit-  and bake in the middle, usually on a stone with parchment. I've also used an iron skillet.

If you have two burners, I think you could turn off one side, and bake on the "off" side and you will achieve the same effect if you keep and eye on it and rotate every so often.  Actually I keep turning mine too.

It is a learning experience, and I have not achieved an an exact oven-like outcome, but it can be quite good.