Pizza Night

[JimK]

Did a few pies this evening. It's actually been a couple years since I fired up the Kettle Pizza. It was clear, I need to fine tune my game. But this was the first time I've used Caputo 00 flour and I certainly won't be moving away from that anytime soon, if I can help it. I preheated the stone on the Genesis gas grill for about 30 minutes just shy of 400 degrees. Had a pretty good fire going in the kettle, and the crusts were cooking much faster than the toppings (I don't have the optional steel with my KP, so a lot of heat is up at the top of the dome - a good 8 inches above the pizza. When I noticed the crust was cooking so fast, I fired up the broiler in the kitchen. After about 4 minutes or so on the grill, I finished the pizzas under the broiler. In all, I did three.

First pie, first person view - about to go into the cooker.


About a minute in:



First pie done. Half pepperoni, half Margherita.



Second pie, pepperoni and sausage:



Final pie, half pepperoni and sausage, half Margherita:



The third one was definitely the best, as I had my timing dialed in at that point. On the first two, I felt like the bottom was burned, but the dough could have cooked through a little more - may have just been the liquid in the mozzarella. With the KP, the fire flames out quickly and I was already starting to lose heat after the 2nd pizza. All in all, a pretty good effort. Really enjoyed working with this dough, even though I tore one of the pizzas slightly. Plenty of toppings left for another attempt, so I'll be back at it soon.

 

[Rich G]

Jim, the pizzas look great! I love working with my Caputo pizza dough......so soft and extensible! I think I need to aim for your 550F temp (per the gauge) rather than my 650-700 that I've been using......that plus some top heat I think will be a good range.

Good job getting back into the pizza game (your shaping hasn't suffered from your layoff!)

R

 

[Michael C.]

Those Pies looks great to me!!!!!! Nice Job!!!

 

[Cliff Bartlett]

Those are some mighty fine looking pies Jim. I'm doing something very similar to your half margherita tonight. Hope it comes out looking as good as yours. The batch I did last night sure didn't.

 

[Michael Richards]

I think the all look great, but I can see how the coloring on the third looks perfect. If the first to are super dark on the underside I can see how you could feel they were a little under done on top, but man even with that they still look great. Pizza on the kettle is really hit on my to do list.

 

[mikemm]

Those pies look great!

 

[Rich Dahl]

Pies look real good.
When I had my dedicated kettle for the kettle pizza I did a modification to the lid. I took an old ash catcher tray off of a silver 22 kettle, drilled a small hole in the kettle top and inverted the ash tray and mounted it with a small four inch bolt all the way down with a nut on the top of the tray and the bottom. With the convex tray it reflected the heat back to the top of the pie cooking it much faster, so the top and bottom finished up at about the same time. Made a big difference.