Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Did another pizza last night. Still need work on the crust, but the baking implement worked marvelously. One chimney of charcoal, one hunk of maple. I rotate the pizza some to even out the cooking. It could use a little more heat on top, but it wasn't a serious limitation. I do lift the pizza into the dome for a bit to get a little extra heat on it. Eventually I consider a 'roof', but for now I'm pretty happy and have other projects.

More pizza last night. Missed a week due to being in North Carolina.

Dough: CI Thin crust one, retarded raising in fridge for 3 days. This turned out great.
Toppings: Fresh garlic (i.e. junior), pizza sauce (canned), fresh tomatoes, spring onion, Very very fresh basil (garden is 10 ft from BBQ...), middle of the road mozza. Mozza was put on in chunks (about 1/2").

Procedure: Put on extra charcoal and really warmed her up this time. Put on chunk of oak just minutes before cooking. Pizza cook time was under 4 min (maybe about 3), and top was browned in that time. Rough measurement had stone at about 600F

Results: By a good margin, best so far. This was great pizza, IMO. According to my wife, better then any you could get in this city.

I'm liking this device.

Very good to hear Paul! My unit is now sitting in Manila and I expect delivery on Monday or Tuesday, based on their previous performance. The thin crust is the way to go, I hear and good that the extra heat worked. I don't have any cheap hardwood here, but will try the exterior ring of coconut tree which, while not hardwood, is used for construction here and much harder than the center portion of the trunk. Your 3 to 4 minute cook time is similar to the hot wood fired ovens, so you are in the ball park! Did you cook only one pizza? They say that a load of charcoal and wood will give you about 3 pizzas before needing to be refueled.

What sort of charcoal are you using? I will probably try our local lump, not briquette, since it burns hotter, though faster. And my wife is all for toppings, so that will be more of a challenge for me. Cheese melts slower, but a roof of some sorts, even a sheet metal to keep hot air moving across should help. I'll see how that goes when I find out what shape my pizza stones arrive in. I'm playing with the idea of placing a half load of lit charcoal on the top of the oven (when I get one constructed, under the dome lid, the lid vent open and enough space for air to rise. That should allow the top to radiate heat while redirecting air flow from the hotter bottom fire across the top of the pizza.

But your reports are very heartening. All the "extra" effort may not be necessary, at least not right away. I hope to do a "California" or "Chicago Thin" pizza on the Weber and then a "New York Neapolitan". What sort of dough recipe did you use? And roughly how thick did you stretch or roll it?

Kudos for you on the pizza. Very nice to turn out really good stuff with a very basic home setup.

I use quality briquettes, made in Canada, which burn very clean and hot.

I made two pizzas. Definitely could make 3, no question. Maybe 4. With more hardwood, probably a small period and then a couple more I suspect; the charcoal was still doing well.

I used the CI thin crust recipe from Jan 2011, 3 day raise, rolled out as thin as I could get it (a little thinner then they suggest I think). I used AP flour.

Ah, heck, I don't have a CI magazine membership anymore, though I do have a CI web membership, which is about to go away! I searched on "Pizza Dough" and got quite a few pages of results - on the first page of 10, 4 of them were now Editors Choice recipes meaning I had to pay an extra fee upgrade to read them. On the second page of 10, 6 of them were Editors Choice and thus not available to a mere "paying" member. Initially an annoying exercise in trying to pry more dollars out of me, it will soon turn into a cancellation.

Okay, off my rant, sorry. I am doing a lot of pizza dough recipe hunting at pizzamaking.com and also the Fresh Loaf website. Lots of styles to play with. I'm really interested, down the road, in doing the cracker style, a very crispy, flaky sort of crust that Pizza Hut used to serve in the 60's and early 70's.

I'm glad to hear that 3 or 4 pizzas are do-able from a single firing. We will hit the market for tomatoes and basil on Sunday, the mid-level mozzarella and pepperoni on Monday, finally settling in and waiting for the Pizza Kettle to arrive.

Thanks for the update!

Steve, I think this is the one Paul used:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011 ... ecipe.html

Thanks very much guys! Not sure how I missed it but by following the links from here to SE and then from SE to CI, and logging in ... the video recipe appeared. I am printing out SE's version and watching the video over a couple of times. Now I am just trying to engage my patience with the delivery guys for the Pizza Kettle and the two stones, may they be in big enough pieces to use!


Update: The packages arrived today! What a surprise. And I am very happily to report that both my pizza stones have made the trip across the Pacific Ocean and up the mountains of Luzon to Baguio City in one piece. Well, two of them, so I guess technically two pieces, eh?

Plus an IR Therm gun for checking the stones temps, small fridge thermometers for keeping an eye on the fridge temps when curing bacon so forth, a nice if somewhat small wooden pizza peel, and a couple of pizza spinners I should have had made here, but ordered from the Pizza Kettle maker.

Tomorrow will be a hunt for ingredients! Cheese, tomatoes, check the market for fresh basil, get some sort of meat toppings, and start the dough. And find the wood, coconut or some sort of cheap hardwood for kicking the fire up to the 600F plus range.

Woohoo!

Have fun Steve!

Amy

Christmas in June?
fitzie

Just like it, Fitzie! I am really so amazed that both stones got here in pristine condition. Next week my bro-n-law will trundle down to a fabricator with the food grate and have one made to hold either the big D shaped stone or the smaller round stone, so I can have a ceiling in the unit. Today we are looking for wood and pizza ingredients. And starting a couple of doughs. One is "emergency dough" for use right away, the other will age for at least 24 in the fridge.

Paul, You put "extra" briquettes? So more than a chimney full? Like a chimney and a half worth? I have lower temp, slower burning round briquettes and faster burning, hotter Filipino lump charcoal, so I will use mostly the latter. Did you cover the bottom stone to let it heat for a few minutes before installing the PK insert above the food grill and the dome on that?