The Pizza Quest continues... Now with Kettle Pizza (long)


 
My quest for a nearly perfect wood-fired pizza continues. Much progress was made with the wife this month in my crusade to install a full Neapolitan brick oven in the backyard. She agreed that we Need it, but only if I agreed to put it off a year for budget considerations. Marriage is the art of compromise, so I quickly agreed. In the meantime, I picked up a Kettle Pizza and have put it through its paces.

I got the basic version because I couldn't stand the idea of paying $80 more basically just for the baking steel. So below is how I've rigged it up and, after a couple trial runs, have gotten very good results.

After a first run, it was very, very clear that everyone online who said you need to add some thermal mass to the dome was right on the money. So I put my CI grate on the top level of the attachment, and on that placed some unglazed red quarry tile I picked up for about $.60/apiece. I know it looks hokey, but it works and it only cost me a couple bucks. If you notice, I put the hinged Weber grill grate on the bottom to hold the pizza stone. I put the hinged grate in upside down, so that the flaps hang down and open, which allows me to shove wood across the pizza stone and down on to the fire as needed. It works so well I'm just going to pull the hinged flaps off completely this weekend.

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I lit the unit - just in the back third of the grill - with an overflowing chimney full of KBB, and then stacked on top of that about 4 or 5 of the biggest chunks of smoke wood I have. It ended up being a mix of hickory and pecan. The ideal would be splits, not chunks, of oak but that's hard to find in this country. Chunks work ok, but the bigger the better as this things burns fuel in a hurry. Sorry, I didn't take any pics of fueling.

The first pie I fired was a simple basic Neapolitan pizza dough recipe found online. Used AP flour rather than 00 or anything fancy. This one had torn pepperoni, hot italian sausage and fresh mozzarella.

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In the meantime, I had my pizza stone warming in the oven in the house at about 500*. I think warming the stone in the oven is an important step. I don't think the Kettle Pizza can be set up to run for the length of time necessary to really load the stone. This is a great accessory for quick flashes of pizza brilliance - not extended, hours long pizza parties (unless you have a LOT of fuel on hand).

This is what the kettle looked like all set up and fired.

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The whole idea of covering the top of the unit with stone or steel is to build thermal mass to help cook from the top down. In my view, this is best accomplished by getting the flames to lick forward toward the opening in the kettle. This was definitely happening for me. I tried to capture it in the pic below but I'm not sure it turned out.

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Finally, the finished product. I forgot to turn this one halfway through, hence the different hemispheres of char. But without question this pizza, and the four that followed, have been the best I've turned out at home. Best of all, I was able to cook the pies on the stone for about 90 - 100 seconds, and then lift them on the peel to "dome" them inside the unit. For the first time I was able to really crisp up the toppings. You just can't beat those little burnt ends on the pepperoni. When I had my kettle at its peak for heat, I was cooking pies in just under 2 minutes. Sorry, I didn't have a laser handy to get a good temp. I just ordered a new one on Amazon.

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Here's a quick clip of the first pie on the stone.


Lessons drawn from this cook:

1. This needs hardwood splits, not chunks, to achieve the temps necessary for a true Neapolitan experience
2. No matter what, your pizza stone will cool as it sits in the pizza kettle, especially the front of the stone. Pre-heat your stone in your oven.
3. All fuel must be in the back of the grill, not under the stone. Fuel under the stone leads to burned pizza. I learned this the hard way on a previous cook.
4. It probably takes a solid hour to hour and a half to get the coals lit, get the grill lit and let the heat build before you can think about cooking a pizza.
5. If anyone knows where to find a 22" pizza stone that I could put on the top of this instead of those stupid tiles, I am in the market.

All in all, I really like the Kettle Pizza and highly recommend, as long as you're ok tinkering with it a bit.
 
Thanks for the write up. I just got mine and I already planned on putting a steel plate on top of the KP to reflect the heat down. It's only 1/8" . I'll see how that works.
 
I think it will work fine. I've got a buddy in town who is a steel fabricator who is looking for a solution for me. Maybe get a steel plate plasma cut to fit the grill.

My thinking has sort of changed on this. At first I thought I needed something really heavy on top to build thermal mass. Now I think you just need something, anything, to cover the top of the grill - especially the back - to force the flames to lick forward toward the opening in the Kettle Pizza. I might be wrong, but I think getting those flames moving forward is a better solution, at least in a kettle grill, than trying to get the thing so hot that heat radiates from the top. In fact, I'm not sure that's even possible in a kettle.
 
Just got mine today, doubt I'll get to mess with it much before this weekend, but it's going to be a pie weekend at my place

Yours looks great Joe
 
Thanks for the detailed post Tom. I've just finished building my own Kettle Pizza clone and this info will be very useful in my first tryout this weekend. Have you considered using Vermiculite or Calcium Silicate fire board on top? This would provide very good insulation i was also going to wrap my top grate in foil for reflecting heat. I am not sure if insulation or thermal mass is best. What do you think?
 
Looks really good Joe. I have the original Kettle Pizza. I like it, but I think it's a bit too tall. It looks like they shortened the new ones quite a bit (at least 2" by my estimation), and from what I can tell from your results, it looks like the one you have works quite a bit better than the first generation.

In my setup, I use a Red Sky Grilling stone on the bottom -- it's shaped like the kettle, with an opening at the back, and a baking steel on the top. I've gotten really good results with this setup. I'm still using wood chunks rather than splits, and I get temps upward of 800-900 degrees fahrenheit. I would recommend using it on an old kettle you don't care much for anymore. Last time I made pizza the cleaning vents welded to the bowl!

Red Sky: http://grilledpizzastone.com/
Baking Steel: http://bakingsteel.com/
 
Looks really good Joe. I have the original Kettle Pizza. I like it, but I think it's a bit too tall. It looks like they shortened the new ones quite a bit (at least 2" by my estimation), and from what I can tell from your results, it looks like the one you have works quite a bit better than the first generation.

In my setup, I use a Red Sky Grilling stone on the bottom -- it's shaped like the kettle, with an opening at the back, and a baking steel on the top. I've gotten really good results with this setup. I'm still using wood chunks rather than splits, and I get temps upward of 800-900 degrees fahrenheit. I would recommend using it on an old kettle you don't care much for anymore. Last time I made pizza the cleaning vents welded to the bowl!

Red Sky: http://grilledpizzastone.com/
Baking Steel: http://bakingsteel.com/

Red Sky link within that link has been suspended.
 
Red Sky link within that link has been suspended.

Weird. It opens up with I click on it. Just google "red sky grilling stone" and that should take you where you want to go. They may be sold on Amazon too, which would help the TVWBB site if you ended up pulling the trigger and bought through their link.
 
BUT if you click on the link in that supplied link (ie: -->PIZZA STONE<--) about a third of the way down or any other link on that page, the website/domain is suspended and you can't get to the stone page.



 
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Weird. It opens up with I click on it. Just google "red sky grilling stone" and that should take you where you want to go. They may be sold on Amazon too, which would help the TVWBB site if you ended up pulling the trigger and bought through their link.

I've tried Amazon and elsewhere and have come to the sad conclusion that the Red Sky pizza stone is no longer available. Too bad, as it would be absolutely perfect.
 
I bought the "Emile Henry" Ceramic (BBQ) stone. (EH) I've done a couple pizzas on it before I bought the Kettle Pizza cooker, combined they should work well together. You can cut on the EH stone and it comes with a 10 year Guarantee, no questions asked. The normal price is $50, I found it on sale for $35, but I don't see any sales on it now
 
The Red Sky Grill stone is great. It's too bad their site has been suspended. They have a facebook page but it looks like the last entry was in 2013. Not sure what happened to them but the stone is a great product. Hopefully someone else will start selling it.
 
Have you considered using Vermiculite or Calcium Silicate fire board on top? This would provide very good insulation i was also going to wrap my top grate in foil for reflecting heat. I am not sure if insulation or thermal mass is best. What do you think?

I've thought about casting a short dome out of vermiculite + portland cement to replace the Weber lid when doing pizza. As I've never done anything like that and just had a baby two weeks ago, my tinkering time in the garage has been limited. In a perfect world I think I would cast a vermiculite or perlite blend in a shape a little squattier than the Weber lid. I was thinking about using a plastic disc my kids sled on as the mold. In any case, for this application you really need the roof down as close to the cooking surface as possible.

I hadn't considered fire board very much. I talked to a guy at Home Depot about it and was told it was only fire proof up to 80* celsius. Don't know if he was right or not, but I sort of moved on from the idea.

As for insulation vs. thermal mass I can only tell you that my current thinking is that thermal mass would be BEST but that a simple reflector like foil would probably work as well. I used the quarry tiles as kind of a compromise.

I say this because my understanding of a true wood-fired oven is that it takes significant time to build up the heat in the dome to radiate down. Maybe not many hours, but certainly a couple hours or so to fire the oven and get it to temp. The limitation of the Kettle in this regard is that it has limited space for fuel. With charcoal as your base there is really only room for a couple chunks or maybe two splits of wood. And once those burn down, the heat in there drops significantly and fast. Basically, once I get the Kettle Pizza roaring to temp I have a hard time holding it there longer than is necessary to make and cook maybe 3 pizzas. Then I have to reload it, wait for the wood to smoke out, etc. (This happens to be just about the right time to drink a beer).

I just don't think I can hold the Kettle Pizza at full blast long enough to load a stone dome with enough heat that it would radiate back down to the cooking deck with the temps necessary. Much better in my view to get the flames roaring over the top of the deck and go like heck with as many pizzas as you can.

Please note this might all be wrong. It's just what I'm thinking now.
 
A cast dome would be hard core but weight might be a challenge. The fire board I am going to try is rated up to 1200 C and is used for kiln lining. I'm likely going to use the calcium silicate as the vermiculite boards are twice as heavy - circa 6kg for a 55cm (22") disc. Both board type can be worked with standard woodworking tools.
 
Very nice!!! With all you guys sharing your techniques on making a pizza with these Pizza Kettles you're getting close to making the perfect pizza!!
 

 

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