Pizza Bust

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My secret for making a good pizza is to call Tony two miles down the road and tell him I will pick it up in twenty minutes.
 
Only cooking I've done in our stove was some trout wrapped in foil. I placed a few of those red bricks on top of the coals and placed the wrapped trout on the bricks. Problem was not knowing exactly when to take them out and checking them in the foil to see if they were done would have been tough. In the end I just guessed and they were perfect.
I would think you could use a few bricks on top of your coals to put that pizza stone on and that would help moderate the heat on the bottom, then you could put your pizza in the oven (stove) at a higher temp so the top would cook a little faster.
Better yet, why don't I get one of those pizza stones and try it myself. ;-)
Thanks for the thread. :)
 
Havn't used the stone in a while but I don't remember preheating it ?
rn
 
The dome on the pizza oven allows heat to roll over the top of the pizza as it seeks escape through the front. As you can see in my video. The crust should be the last thing done. You can have a little control of the top by moving it around the firebrick. In a wood stove the heat would not have proper movement. Hope this helps.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A66cf57eLHc
 
Adios Pantalones said:
I'll be building one as well and will likely put in a thermocouple. I plan to put a BBQ smoker on top of it (all brick) and use the pizza oven as a smoker box when BBQing.

PhatfB- thanks for the book suggestion. I'll read that and adapt. My general plan includes hand making some serious heavy tile for the outside to go with the brick and maybe castable refractory for the dome/arch.

I cannot wait to see the build. I am still thinking my plan through. I should be done with the inside project by end of March. Then it is time for firewood and outside work. Have to lay the patio and move the hot tub. Then the patio on the other side - where the fire pit/pizza oven/smoker is supposed to go. i live having the outdoor fires and smoking so maybe the pizza oven can suffer...not really sure at this point. I may just make a separate smoker chamber in the unit where i can pipe a wood stove into it or something like that.
 
BeGreen said:
Trouble with our trial is that the bottom was cooking long before the top. If I pulled it out when the bottom was perfect, the cheese would have just been starting to melt. The secret is to have even heat in the oven. Then it is more a matter of timing based on the temp of the oven.

Craig is right about getting good pizza. It's doubly hard to find on the west coast. Not enough Italians and Greeks out here! :) The oven is only a small part of the picture. Getting the crust dough right is very important as is every other ingredient, especially the sauce. That's why I was bummed out about the burnt pizza. It had our precious homemade sauce on it from last summer's garden.

BeG... I understand that completely. I dont care if it might not be quite as good as that well known restaraunt in town, my own made with my own sauce and veggies from the garden, even my own venison italian sausage, will always be better and probably cheaper too. But if I were trying what your doing for the first time I'd be using the on-sale store bought sauce and topping the first couple times for sure!

Jlow that looks like a very well thought out and constructed project, wow! I'd love to have something like that when I build my deck/patio. It just seems like an awfully lot of work and effort to bake a pizza (though I am sure you can back more). I guess in the heat of summer though it would keep the heat out of the kitchen! So just how long does it take to heat that sucker up to bake a pizza for 2 minutes?
 
Boozie said:
Milt said:
Boozie said:
ironpony said:
I use a piece of granite in the oven
at 500-550

Since "some" granite emits radon, I would think that heating it up would intensify same.
Just wondering.

I don't think that a piece of granite that I can pick up is going to emit so much radon that I will have to worry about it.

"some" granite emits radon ...... have you read any tests done on granite that has been heated?
Interestingly enough, I received this from Dr. Weil's newsletter this morning:

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/TIP03953/Radon-in-Your-Kitchen-Counters.html

I pick what I panic about, and no quack selling vitamins is going to cause me to panic. :)

Besides, I live in a house with a Radon barrier for a reason, and if the pizza stone emits radon, it goes up the chimney. I have been wearing the same radium dialed Rolex for 42 years, and it may kill me yet. More likely, it will be something else.
 
Yeah, I don't mean to brag, but we do make a pretty fine, NY style pizza. Not as good as some of the best I've tried, but the best within a couple hours of home. Always on the lookout though, but a lot of reviewers out here don't know what makes a really fine pizza. Oddly enough, when we were in Italy last year, we had some disappointing pizza there until we got in the south. The north makes them pretty bland.
 
To all who think its only about baking pizza you are terriably mistaken first pizza when the fire is going ... then you rake out the fire and bake bread rolls muffins then pies or cakes the next day casaerole or meat, lastly you can dry fruit or herbs ... all that off one fireing. some countries in south america have one large oven for the whole village and they fire it once a week,, all the women come together and do the weeks cooking over the next 3 days... they are truly an amazing tool
 
It took me 3 weekends to complete. With our oven, we burn a big fire in it for 2-2 1/2 hours and then push the coals into the back and dust off the firebricks we will be using for the pizzas. We make about 25 pizzas per burn and freeze them for nights when the wife doesn't feel like cooking. They re-heat nicely. After we are done with the pizzas, I respread the coals over the complete surface and close the door to spread the heat evenly. After about a 1/2 hour the temp is right for bread baking. I clean out all the coals and then we bake 3-4 loves of my favorite German Rye. The last two pictures in this album show some finished product.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/WoodStove#
 
jlow said:
It took me 3 weekends to complete. With our oven, we burn a big fire in it for 2-2 1/2 hours and then push the coals into the back and dust off the firebricks we will be using for the pizzas. We make about 25 pizzas per burn and freeze them for nights when the wife doesn't feel like cooking. They re-heat nicely. After we are done with the pizzas, I respread the coals over the complete surface and close the door to spread the heat evenly. After about a 1/2 hour the temp is right for bread baking. I clean out all the coals and then we bake 3-4 loves of my favorite German Rye. The last two pictures in this album show some finished product.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/WoodStove#
Three weekends isn't too bad, how about the costs??? I know those fire bricks aren't cheap.
Looks GREAT! by the way. :)
 
BeGreen, I think you nailed it when you wrote that all the heat is on the bottom. It is, and way to concentrated there. I have that same pizza stone, and use it all the time in my convection oven at 550 degrees, which it is designed to do. Inside a wood stove, it just lacks the thermal mass to radiate evenly, I think. If you were to take a few fire bricks and spread them on your coals, you might have better results putting the pizza stone on top of it.

BTW, I used to get really frustrated trying to dress a pizza and slide it perfectly into the stove using a peel.....inevitably it would stick or pile up in a heap. Then, I realized that I could take the hot stone out of the oven, spread the dough and toppings on it there, and slide the whole shootin' match back in. Worked like a charm.
 
Agreed, this will take something to remove contact between the coals and the stone. Cornmeal is the trick to getting the pizza to slide easily off the peel. That part went very smoothly.
 
Yep, I use cornmeall too. Still, it takes a deft hand to quickly jerk the peel and get the pie to slide off intact, as you know. Sometimes I could do it, and sometimes not. When it didn't, man you talk about a train wreck! Mostly, it would slide off the peel, but stick on the stone. I commend you if you can do that very often. I wish I had a metal peel, instead of a board one. That might make a difference. It is also useful for slipping under the pizza and turning it so it will cook evenly. You know, a professional pizza oven gets upwards to 1,000 degrees. That is why, I'm told, that 1/2 of the cost of your average pizza is the energy it took to cook it.
 
BeGreen said:
Yeah, I don't mean to brag, but we do make a pretty fine, NY style pizza. Not as good as some of the best I've tried, but the best within a couple hours of home. Always on the lookout though, but a lot of reviewers out here don't know what makes a really fine pizza. Oddly enough, when we were in Italy last year, we had some disappointing pizza there until we got in the south. The north makes them pretty bland.

How about a dough recipe? I'm never satisfied with mine. My wife gives me a hard time about my obsession. I'm happy with every other aspect of my pizza, still searching for the prefect crust. I know it's prolly not gonna happen on the oven, but I know I can do better.
 
BeGreen said:
We tried cooking pizza for the first time tonight in the wood stove. I let the coals burn down to a level bed, spread them out and put the pizza stone on them. Air control on low. I measured the stone with the IR thermometer 10 minutes later at 446F. Hmmm. Twenty minutes later, ready to put the first pizza on. I set a stopwatch and measured the stone temp - 856F. Getting worried, but folks here say it works great, so here it goes. At 2 minutes, cheese is starting to melt, crust is puffing up. Looking good. Just after 3 min. I notice the crust starting to darken. I took this picture at 3m36s then removed the pizza. Result, beautiful on top, inedible burnt crust on bottom. The second try was at 3 minutes exactly, but it burnt too. So how are folks avoiding getting the stone too hot? (ours has a new crack too now, not too happy.)

Oh boy, Look what I started with that French Bread. LOL. sorry it didnt work out it may be the stone maybe too hot. I have to try to make pizza one of these days. Did she make the dough for the pizza or was it store-bought?
 
jlow said:
It took me 3 weekends to complete. With our oven, we burn a big fire in it for 2-2 1/2 hours and then push the coals into the back and dust off the firebricks we will be using for the pizzas. We make about 25 pizzas per burn and freeze them for nights when the wife doesn't feel like cooking. They re-heat nicely. After we are done with the pizzas, I respread the coals over the complete surface and close the door to spread the heat evenly. After about a 1/2 hour the temp is right for bread baking. I clean out all the coals and then we bake 3-4 loves of my favorite German Rye. The last two pictures in this album show some finished product.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/WoodStove#

Again, all sounds great. 25 pizzas wow that is a process. Just making all that dough... I mean when I do DIY pizzas I try to make dough the night before but even still spread over 2 days is a lot or work! And then cooling off and freezing that many... Although that would actually save some work; in making our own sauce canning of course is a big process, as well as freezing or canning things like peppers. If it were say towards the end of summer when all the tomatoes and veggies are rip you could make all the sauce and harvest veggies then make the pizzas without having to preserve anything, except for the finished product or course. I think I might need a bigger vacuum sealer though!
 
BeGreen said:
Agreed, this will take something to remove contact between the coals and the stone. Cornmeal is the trick to getting the pizza to slide easily off the peel. That part went very smoothly.

Woo! Pizza Thread!

I use semolina flour.. its a little harder than corn meal.
 
BG,

Try a Big Green Egg Plate Setter. They're made of BGE ceramic and they're thicker than most bread/pizza stones I've seen, so they're less likely to burn the bottom while the toppings are still cooking. Plus, they have built-in legs to pick them up off the coals a bit. Size Medium will fit in your T6. Amazon has them at http://www.amazon.com/Big-Green-Egg-Plate-Setter/dp/B001ETN20Q
 

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I've had pretty good luck cooking pizza in my wood stove. My stepson welded together a stove "table" with metal legs about 5.5" long that I sit on the coals. I put the pizza pan on that. It's a hot little bugger to get back out again though ;-) Helps to cook your veggies before hand, love to sear the peppers, onions and "shrooms" and then saute a little. yum!

Carolyn
 
Didn't read every line of every post because cooking isn't my thing, but I showed the wife the first couple of posts and her input was as follows. In her experience with cooking stones, the stone needs to heat up with the pizza, rather that tossing the raw ingredients on a thermo-nuclear hot stone. She is anxious to try cooking something in our stove now. Anyway, sorry if this was already posted. The pizza did look good anyway. Good luck
 
Under seasoned pizza is a creosote maker. Make sure it reads no more than 20% on the pepperoni meter.
 
thechimneysweep said:
BG,

Try a Big Green Egg Plate Setter. They're made of BGE ceramic and they're thicker than most bread/pizza stones I've seen, so they're less likely to burn the bottom while the toppings are still cooking. Plus, they have built-in legs to pick them up off the coals a bit. Size Medium will fit in your T6. Amazon has them at http://www.amazon.com/Big-Green-Egg-Plate-Setter/dp/B001ETN20Q

Oooo, that looks interesting. I may try it if we can get a successful run here. The next try will be a plain cheese pizza with a good quality bottled sauce. I am either going to clear the coals complete to the back of the stove so that the stone can rest directly on the firebrick, or I may try using a couple bricks to elevate the stone well off of the coals. For sure I will not put the dough on such a hot stone again. Ideally I would like the stone at about 450-500F and the stove temps in a similar range. That may be hard to accomplish unless I pull a bucket of coals out of a hot stove which is more than I want to play with indoors.

Kind of silly all this. I mean heck, we have a great convection oven that makes very nice pizza already. Warm in RI, from all I've read, you want the stone at oven temp before inserting pizza. Our problem was that by resting directly on the coals it was at double the interior temp of the stove.
 
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