Pizza Question


 

JRAiona

TVWBB Gold Member
When you make pizza on your performer I know it's a good idea to let the stone preheat once you dump the coals to prevent thermal shock but do you have coals directly under the pizza stone?
 
From what I read in my Pizzaque literature, not directly under the stone but, I'm sure someone will chime in with more experience than I.
 
When I used my Kettle pizza I would place most of the coals and wood toward the back. Now that I went back to using just the kettle without the kettle pizza attachment on it. I take a large chimney of KBB and when it's about half lit I dump it and spread it around the center of the kettle put the pizza stone on and let them both come up to temp together. Eliminates any thermo shock to the stone.
Make sure your stone is rated at least to 600* or higher. Sometimes I will add a chunk of wood to the coals if I want a little Smokey taste to the pie.
 
Rich, just interesting to know why you don't use the pizza attachment anymore?
And without it, do you keep the kettle closed or half open to get more oxygen/more heat?

I have just started making pizza on the grill and still struggle to get everything done at the same time. Bottom is great, dough was not fully cooked, could have done with more heat at the top.....
 
I just got that very thermometer for the same reason!
However, the thermometer does not address the OP question about how to arrange the fire, do you use the "horseshoe" format, graduated design (more at rear, some under stone) or just what method?
 
I messed around for years with the Red Sky Grilling stone and used their suggested method of placing a layer of K underneath spread out evenly using a Weber charcoal basket in the front. The top was always a little under done. So I raised the stone placing two charcoal baskets under the stone and on top of the 22" cooking grate. That worked much better with the same arrangement for the coals. Then a member here posted that you can get one of these from amazon Germany so I ordered it. The pizza came out perfect every time so I guess I got bored and stopped making Pizza! But this year I will start again, I must!

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JR,

I do a ton of pizzas on my Performer with the Kettle Pizza attachment. If you are doing just one quick pizza you can probably get away with coals under the stone. Any more than that and in my experience the stone gets way too hot. My dough will burn almost instantly it seems if I put on a stone with the coals directly underneath. I think the commercially available stones we get at retail stores are just too thin. At those temps the heat just flies right through them.

I bank my coals, and a lot of them, along with a wood split behind where I put the stone and pre-heat the stone in my kitchen oven. I take it down to the grill as soon as I'm ready to cook my first pizza.

Not sure if this method translates to using the Weber attachment or others but my guess is that it will.

Just avoid what I did a couple weeks ago, which is mess up lifting the pizza with my peel and inadvertently dump the dough onto my live fire, extinguishing it in the process, and causing some bad social feelings with the wife.

Here are some (bad) pictures of how I usually set it up.

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I would approach it a bit differently.

If you seem to undercook the top of the pie, push coals to the back forming a moon shape and rotate the pizza at half time. If you undercook the bottom, spread the coals more evenly next time. Sure it requires some experimenting but I think you have to adapt to your cooker, there's probably no one-size-fits-all solution. The key seems to be reaching proper pizza cooking temperatures (700+F) and I could never accomplish this without a dedicated pizza kit in my kettle.

It might help you to read up on my pizza evolution here in the grilling part of the forum: https://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?68314-Pizza-headaches/ - or just compare the first pictures with the last ones :)
 
Kristof, I anticipate exercising your experience to have a wonderful pizza feast next week (pulling a butt this week) for family dinner, crescent moon fire design makes sense for your reasoning. I know the learning curve is about to begin!
 

 

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