A few months ago I ordered the Serious Eats edition of the Kettle Pizza when it was on sale and finally got around to to trying it. Prior to inviting people over I wanted to give it try to avoid the embarrassment of a complete failure and needing to order pizza instead. I think it worked well but now I have to figure out where to store this thing! Leaving it outside on the grill and exposing the wood handles to the elements doesn't seem like a good idea. Here is what I did.
Made dough and sauce using this recipe This made a lot of dough and I think would have made 4-5 12 inch pizzas had I been cooking for a crowd instead of just me.
Sorry no pics of that process or the grill setup. I had a difficult time rolling the dough out as thin as I wanted. Maybe I need a heavier rolling pin? Dumped an almost full chimney starter of lit Kingsford Blue into a 'C' shape along the back and side of the grill. Added about 1/4 of a chimney of unlit on top of that and let the stone heat up. Tried to keep coals from being directly under the pizza stone. After 15 minutes or so I added 4 hunks of Royal Oak lump since I didn't have any mild hardwood logs to use. The Kettle Pizza folks say wood is necessary in order to get the temperature hot enough which is why I added some RO.
This is what it looked like prior to putting the pizza on. The flame is from the RO.
Pizza ready to go on. It slid right off the corn meal covered peel with no issue.
The back of the kettle was very hot and the pizza needed to be rotated to avoid burning which I did not do soon enough. After 6-7 minutes it looked like this:
See where it started to burn because I didn't rotate it soon enough?
The final product was not a thin as I was hoping for and I think that is why the crust had a slight chew to it. Perhaps the dough wasn't completely cooked through because it cooked so fast. It was edible but didn't have that crunch (except for the edges) that I was hoping for. I guess that will happen at 700 F assuming the thermometer is correct.
Side view of a slice
Overall I was pleased but need to get better an making dough and shaping it into pizza dough. The fire stayed at 700 for almost an hour so there was plenty of time to make more. The next step is to actually invite people over and hope for the best. I learned that I can't do it all myself and some of the guests will need to be responsible for assembling the pizzas while the one on the grill is being attended to.
As always, thanks to everyone here for all of the advice.
-mark
Made dough and sauce using this recipe This made a lot of dough and I think would have made 4-5 12 inch pizzas had I been cooking for a crowd instead of just me.
Sorry no pics of that process or the grill setup. I had a difficult time rolling the dough out as thin as I wanted. Maybe I need a heavier rolling pin? Dumped an almost full chimney starter of lit Kingsford Blue into a 'C' shape along the back and side of the grill. Added about 1/4 of a chimney of unlit on top of that and let the stone heat up. Tried to keep coals from being directly under the pizza stone. After 15 minutes or so I added 4 hunks of Royal Oak lump since I didn't have any mild hardwood logs to use. The Kettle Pizza folks say wood is necessary in order to get the temperature hot enough which is why I added some RO.
This is what it looked like prior to putting the pizza on. The flame is from the RO.
Pizza ready to go on. It slid right off the corn meal covered peel with no issue.
The back of the kettle was very hot and the pizza needed to be rotated to avoid burning which I did not do soon enough. After 6-7 minutes it looked like this:
See where it started to burn because I didn't rotate it soon enough?
The final product was not a thin as I was hoping for and I think that is why the crust had a slight chew to it. Perhaps the dough wasn't completely cooked through because it cooked so fast. It was edible but didn't have that crunch (except for the edges) that I was hoping for. I guess that will happen at 700 F assuming the thermometer is correct.
Side view of a slice
Overall I was pleased but need to get better an making dough and shaping it into pizza dough. The fire stayed at 700 for almost an hour so there was plenty of time to make more. The next step is to actually invite people over and hope for the best. I learned that I can't do it all myself and some of the guests will need to be responsible for assembling the pizzas while the one on the grill is being attended to.
As always, thanks to everyone here for all of the advice.
-mark
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