Kettle pizza oven
- Thread starter Steve Holat
- Start date
John Bridgman
TVWBB Super Fan
$34.20 USD for the Basic. It goes up to $50-something if you include a pizza stone. Shipping stone to Canada seemed like a bad use of money.
EDIT - I ran across the following link which I thought was interesting -- the guys just stuck a bunch of bricks (with holes) onto a stock Performer grill... no details but I imagine the coals are burning directly under the bricks. Other than the "bricks spalling violently and putting out your other eye" risk it seems like an interesting technique.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...udGs&feature=related
Will try the stone first though, tonight with luck. Will try for pics as well.
John Bridgman
TVWBB Super Fan
OK, pics it is. Normally when I'm experimenting I like to change one variable at a time but tonight I changed one (used a pizza stone), nature changed one (high wind last night vs no wind tonight) and "being Friday" changed one (forgot to open the lower vent !!).
Here's the Performer burner lighting a chimney of charcoal. Lid is on the ground rather than the side holder so the flames from the chimney don't discolor the lid during startup :
After the charcoal was burning well I dumped it in an arc around the back of the Performer and added a few chunks of wood :
Without flash so you believe it's really burning :
Put the ring on top and added the stone. Stone was new and expensive so I was a wuss and kept the stone away from the flames :
Put the lid on and left to warm up for ~10 minutes while I prepared the pizza. Probably should have let the stone warm up longer but first priority was avoiding last night's overcooked crust :
Last night was very windy and smoke was belching out the front of the oven. Tonight there was no wind and no smoke, although I also forgot to open the bottom (OneTouch) vent. Will need to <STRIKE>eat more pizza</STRIKE> do more testing. Roughly 700F at the front tonight, seemed quite a bit higher last night, eg 8 min cook time last night vs 12 tonight.
Top and bottom were equally cooked (bottom undercooked if anything), so at least I have the top-to-bottom cooking ratio bracketed. Pizza was very good, but more like an exceptionally good night at Pizza Hut than a good wood fired cook. Need to try again with the &(^%&^%*@!@ lower vent open.
John Bridgman
TVWBB Super Fan
Another variable to test - putting the coals at the side rather than at the back. Seems to me that right now the heat goes up from the back, over the top and out the front (although some will circle around over the pizza), wondering if "up one side, down the other side, then eventually out the front" might result in a higher temperature over the pizza.
It would also simplify the addition of charcoal and/or wood since the flip-up grate section could be left up so all you need to do is lift the kettle lid to refuel.
Oh boy, more pizza
It would also simplify the addition of charcoal and/or wood since the flip-up grate section could be left up so all you need to do is lift the kettle lid to refuel.
Oh boy, more pizza
Jeremy Scarpetta
New member
OK, pics it is. Normally when I'm experimenting I like to change one variable at a time but tonight I changed one (used a pizza stone), nature changed one (high wind last night vs no wind tonight) and "being Friday" changed one (forgot to open the lower vent !!).
Here's the Performer burner lighting a chimney of charcoal. Lid is on the ground rather than the side holder so the flames from the chimney don't discolor the lid during startup :
After the charcoal was burning well I dumped it in an arc around the back of the Performer and added a few chunks of wood :
Without flash so you believe it's really burning :
Put the ring on top and added the stone. Stone was new and expensive so I was a wuss and kept the stone away from the flames :
Put the lid on and left to warm up for ~10 minutes while I prepared the pizza. Probably should have let the stone warm up longer but first priority was avoiding last night's overcooked crust :
Last night was very windy and smoke was belching out the front of the oven. Tonight there was no wind and no smoke, although I also forgot to open the bottom (OneTouch) vent. Will need to <STRIKE>eat more pizza</STRIKE> do more testing. Roughly 700F at the front tonight, seemed quite a bit higher last night, eg 8 min cook time last night vs 12 tonight.
Top and bottom were equally cooked (bottom undercooked if anything), so at least I have the top-to-bottom cooking ratio bracketed. Pizza was very good, but more like an exceptionally good night at Pizza Hut than a good wood fired cook. Need to try again with the &(^%&^%*@!@ lower vent open. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Not sure if anyone asked, but how much charcoal and hardwood did you put in?
TonyReynolds
New member
I have the KettlePizza on order, having found the kit (and this site) researching WFO's, LBE's, etc. and not having the $$$ or time to build my own (yet).
I have a Weber Performer an the rotisserie ring and motor to go with it. I looked at the KettlePizza product and thought, "wow! I could just cut a slot in my existing ring and do some mods." When I told my wife what I was planning , and that I wanted to do a laid-back Father's Day on our deck cooking pizza, she said "why don't you just order the thing already", and offered to share the cost with our daughter.
So there ya go, another convert.
We love pizza and I hate heating up the house (no AC) in the summer to make it, and as everyone has noted, cooking pizza on the grill as it exists doesn't yield the best results. A designer by profession and a tinkerer by nature, I can't wait to get my floury hands on one of these things. Heck, I'll bet that even Papa Murphy's will taste better baked this way.
Cheers, everyone!
Tony
I have a Weber Performer an the rotisserie ring and motor to go with it. I looked at the KettlePizza product and thought, "wow! I could just cut a slot in my existing ring and do some mods." When I told my wife what I was planning , and that I wanted to do a laid-back Father's Day on our deck cooking pizza, she said "why don't you just order the thing already", and offered to share the cost with our daughter.
So there ya go, another convert.
We love pizza and I hate heating up the house (no AC) in the summer to make it, and as everyone has noted, cooking pizza on the grill as it exists doesn't yield the best results. A designer by profession and a tinkerer by nature, I can't wait to get my floury hands on one of these things. Heck, I'll bet that even Papa Murphy's will taste better baked this way.
Cheers, everyone!
Tony
John Bridgman
TVWBB Super Fan
For charcoal, almost a full chimney of lump, but roughly half of that was leftover from the previous cook. For some reason leftover charcoal doesn't seem to burn as well as fresh. There were also a lot of small coals so at least 1/3 of the chimney contents went through the charcoal grate and fell to the bottom of the kettle.
For hardwood, three lumps each < 1/2 the size of my fist (specifically the smaller pieces from a bag of Weber apple wood chunks, since that was what I had handy).
Tried again today; mild wind but did remember to open the lower vent. For some reason temps were lower than yesterday - just touching 700F rather than well past it. Cook times roughly the same as yesterday - ~12 minutes, not like the 8 minute cook with fresh charcoal.
I figured it was time to start over with new charcoal so I let everything burn out this time rather than pulling the oven mod off and closing up the lid to stop the charcoal from burning. We'll see if fresh charcoal makes a difference. Will also try some chunks of firewood next time - today it was pouring rain and figured the wood should be dry if I'm burning it for heat
Shaun R
TVWBB Hall of Fame
Welcome Tony. I hate to ask this on your first post, but where is it that you live without any AC? We rarely use ours and our house wasn't built with it.
John, I am rooting for you. Please keep posting the results. Pizza can really be a hit and miss. They tend to be extremely temperamental? By the way, I see you are using a pan as well. Does it work better with the pan?
Thank's again!
John, I am rooting for you. Please keep posting the results. Pizza can really be a hit and miss. They tend to be extremely temperamental? By the way, I see you are using a pan as well. Does it work better with the pan?
Thank's again!
John Bridgman
TVWBB Super Fan
I just picked up the stone last week and don't have a peel yet so I'm using the pan exclusively and the stone is just acting as a heat sink. Initial experiments using an upside-down pizza pan as a peel were not promising
Not sure I agree with "bamboozled". I know you can make pizza with a stock kettle (and made a bunch that way before testing the oven) and I know I could make one of these things myself in a pinch (but would probably never get around to it), but so far I'm having a lot of fun with it and making at least slightly better pizza than I did before, whether on the kettle or in the oven.
John Bridgman
TVWBB Super Fan
OK, in the interests of science I tried a pizza without the stone but using the shiny pan that came with the oven kit. That gave a much better balance of top vs bottom cooking than the black pan I used before.
I also tracked down one of the sources of apparent randomness -- if you use small chunks of hardwood like you would for smoking then they burn out fast and may not be giving much heat when you put the pizza in. D'oh !!
I also tracked down one of the sources of apparent randomness -- if you use small chunks of hardwood like you would for smoking then they burn out fast and may not be giving much heat when you put the pizza in. D'oh !!
John said,
Since you aren't doing this in a smoker, your wood wants to burn, not good. Try putting your wood in foil, with a few holes to keep it smoldering and not burning. I don't think you need much..
I think the wood is to add some authentic wood oven flavor, the charcoald heat does the cooking.
Since you aren't doing this in a smoker, your wood wants to burn, not good. Try putting your wood in foil, with a few holes to keep it smoldering and not burning. I don't think you need much..
