Cookaholics Bulletin Board

As some may know, I am something of a pizza hound. I am learning to make cheese primarily so I can have better mozzarella for my pizza. Same with making sausages. While these projects are still in the beginning stages, I just ran into something that hopefully will let me kick muh pizza pie up a notch.

It takes one Weber charcoal bbq and a Pizza Kettle. I've read a number of good reviews and a couple of mixed ones. Enough that I was moved to order a Weber from the States. They have them here, but they are asking amazing amounts of money for them ... in the thousand dollar range. Gimmmeabreak! A nice Weber 22.5 inch One Touch Gold for $130 bucks from Amazon and another $90 to get it delivered to my doorstep in the Philippines.

Now I have to get the Pizza Kettle for $130 bucks, a pizza stone, a peel ... probably 75 bucks plus shipping and I will be knocking pizzas out in the 600F to 700F range or higher without too much problem. Woo Hoo!

I have a small second story balcony that is going to house a smoker on one end and the Weber on the other. I can smoke pork spareribs or cook pizza while sipping a nice cool San Miguel and on a very clear day, watch the South China Sea far far down the mountain.

P.S. I can also happily report the success of my first starter from the States. I have cultured buttermilk now. That means my other cultures likely survived, including cultures for Kefir, Viili yogurt, sour cream & cottage cheese, and cheese starters for mozzarella. Christmas came early this year!

Tatoosh,

Several pizza geeks in SF use modified Webers as pizza ovens. As a warning, they also modify their webers to take a gas jet, and insulate them with refractory cement. You may not find that the pizza kettle lives up to its advertising.

That being said, I plan to attempt something like this with my char-broil grill next summer.

Down the road I'd love to see photos or talk to one of the people that modified their Weber. I can imagine that if used commercially, it would need some work since it would be in continuous use. And I appreciate the "tug back to earth" but I will remain at least slightly optimistic based on the number of positive reviews by users from disparate locations. I am sure it is not the equivalent of a well built brick and mortar wood-fired pizza oven, but that said, it does fit on my balcony and costs me maybe 500 bucks all in and delivered, starting from scratch.

I'd be curious to hear how it works out. They caught my eye this summer. But I have to say that I've had good success with my gas Weber and an Emile Henry flame stone.

Yeah, but no self respecting SF geek (of any sort) would accept *any* stock item. If you ain't modified it, it ain't up to spec. Goes for software too It's a matter of pride, not function.

Now I have to go google refractory cement and weber....

Sounds like they just made themselves a gas-fired Big Green Egg.

If we stay in MN we will build onto/modify our existing outdoor brick fireplace and make a pizza oven.

Tatoosh,

Well, I look forward to finding out how well it works. I'll also document my own pizza-making experiments.

cmintzd, besides the slightly negative review the unit got over at Serious Eats, your comment is the one I hear in other forums when discussing this unit, a sort of semi-negative view in the "why bother" arena. And if it is only a marginal performer, I will have to agree.

Adam Kuban gave it a couple of reviews with some puzzling (for me) aspects. In the first review he says he has no problem getting it up to temperature, but he also has a photo of some hardwood to be used in firing it up along with the charcoal. He uses a larger D shape stone in the first review as well. In the second review a few days later, he makes no mention of hardwood used in conjunction with the charcoal and he notes the Weber's inability to get to the 700F he wants until a whole lotta charcoal is used.

That puzzles me. Good heat with some hardwood and so-so heat without. Kind of worth noting in a review that shoots the unit down on that particular aspect. I am interested to hear what the charcoal only experience was, but it is worth noting why the performance fell off.

Other word-of-mouth reviews from the USA and Australia are much more positive. One Aussie who used lump charcoal, likely similar to what we have in the Philippines, said he had no trouble going well over the 700F range and had to tone it down some because he was incinerating his pizzas.

Currently I have a propane-fired oven that goes to 475F maximum. So hitting the 600F range is like Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier for me. Some hardwood and 700F would be on the order of an Apollo mission. Hopefully not an Apollo 13 mission though.

Fuzzy, recording my achievements and mishaps is something I am sadly deficient in. My primary camera is dead and to be honest, I'm usually so involved in either resolving or creating conundrums in my kitchen, I rarely think of distancing myself and recording the process well. I look forward to hearing (and seeing) your progress on this front. I do learn a lot from the insight (and occasionally the mistakes) of others.

The Weber is ordered. The Pizza Kettle is in the process, once I hear about how they package them. I only have to select a stone and peel (or two). I am hoping that by late January, I'll be scorching cornmeal.

Tatoosh

With high quality briquette or just about any lump charcoal, my weber gets insanely hot. If you want to really go crazy, you can add a blower to the vents and drive it off the scale....

Steve,

I didn't intend any negativity. I genuinely spent weeks eyeing them online, but sometimes shipping to Canada is more difficult than it should be. What I found with using the Emile Henry stone on the BBQ is that I have to actually turn the heat down a bit in order to get good results. Otherwise, the bottom is charcoal before the top is even close to being melted/crisped....plus you can't open the lid or the same thing happens. So at around 500 degrees the pizza takes about 8 to 10 minutes. With that fiddling it works well, but I am curious whether the dome action offers more even heat top and bottom. Plus it looks cool.