TonyReynolds
New member
Well, my first foray into KettlePizza land was an unmitigated.....
...disaster!
Not the fault of Al at KettlePizza or the mod in any way, but with my bobbling getting the pizza transferred to the hot stone. I made three pies. The all looked perfect, that is BEFORE they went to the oven.
My problem was that even with LOADS of corn meal I couldn't get the aluminum pizza peel I had under the pie or get the pie off the peel and onto the stone. In my cheapness, I ordered the basic KettlePizza, as I already had two stones and a peel from Costco. The peel looks like a extra large spatula, in stainless, with huge slots. It also had a typical spatula "angle" that made it hard to work with the KettlePizza loading slot.
My first pie bobbled so bad that I turned it over into kind of a Frankenstein calzonne. It was supposed to be the margurite. The second was an Italian salami pie with vegies and the third, the only one that turned out half-way decent, was made with Italian ground sausage and vegies. Pic:
You can see the "offending member" (spatula) to the right. It's now in the recycle bin. I should have gone for the slightly more expensive kit that included a wood peel.
Good things:
1. I did manage to get the temp up over 700 degrees using a mixture of hardwood briquets, hardwood lump and apple (hardwood) chunks. The bad was that I spent precious time screwing around with the pies and lost the best of the higher heat.
2. The dough recipe I used was easy to process and great to work with, though it took more flour than called for. I doubled the recipe to make three pies and added a little whole wheat flour:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_pizza/
3. Using a little olive oil on the dough before adding the sauce worked great to keep the dough from getting soggy.
4. I used Muir Glen Organic pizza sauce (in the can). Great stuff, highly recommended.
This was supposed to be a nice Father's Day pizza fest. It ended up being a little more work than I intended and a disappointment for me (the resident perfectionist), but the family loved the pizza, warts and all. Enough so that they all said they were looking forward to future pies.
So there ya go: the good, the bad and the ugly of my first attempt.
Tony
...disaster!
Not the fault of Al at KettlePizza or the mod in any way, but with my bobbling getting the pizza transferred to the hot stone. I made three pies. The all looked perfect, that is BEFORE they went to the oven.
My problem was that even with LOADS of corn meal I couldn't get the aluminum pizza peel I had under the pie or get the pie off the peel and onto the stone. In my cheapness, I ordered the basic KettlePizza, as I already had two stones and a peel from Costco. The peel looks like a extra large spatula, in stainless, with huge slots. It also had a typical spatula "angle" that made it hard to work with the KettlePizza loading slot.
My first pie bobbled so bad that I turned it over into kind of a Frankenstein calzonne. It was supposed to be the margurite. The second was an Italian salami pie with vegies and the third, the only one that turned out half-way decent, was made with Italian ground sausage and vegies. Pic:
You can see the "offending member" (spatula) to the right. It's now in the recycle bin. I should have gone for the slightly more expensive kit that included a wood peel.
Good things:
1. I did manage to get the temp up over 700 degrees using a mixture of hardwood briquets, hardwood lump and apple (hardwood) chunks. The bad was that I spent precious time screwing around with the pies and lost the best of the higher heat.
2. The dough recipe I used was easy to process and great to work with, though it took more flour than called for. I doubled the recipe to make three pies and added a little whole wheat flour:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_pizza/
3. Using a little olive oil on the dough before adding the sauce worked great to keep the dough from getting soggy.
4. I used Muir Glen Organic pizza sauce (in the can). Great stuff, highly recommended.
This was supposed to be a nice Father's Day pizza fest. It ended up being a little more work than I intended and a disappointment for me (the resident perfectionist), but the family loved the pizza, warts and all. Enough so that they all said they were looking forward to future pies.
So there ya go: the good, the bad and the ugly of my first attempt.
