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.
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.
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.
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
Three weekends isn't too bad, how about the costs??? I know those fire bricks aren't cheap.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#
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.
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.)
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#
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.
jlow said:This is the one I built a few years back. It does pizza in about 2 minutes.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jlowry10/PizzaOven#
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