Decided to go for it and get the 1st pizza cook done.
I have been giving the BGE a workout since I brought it home a few weeks, so now it was time for thin crust pizzas.
Used Alton Brown's recipe for the pizza dough. Let it sit in the refrigerator overnight so that i would have one less thing to worry about during the cook today.
Fired up the egg with B&B, my current fav lump charcoal. Good size pieces which work well in the UDT. I found this humongous piece in the bag today when I filled up the egg. It was as thick as my forearm! There were 2-3 other pieces almost as big. By far the biggest pieces of lump I have found to date.
Here is what a virgin BGE pizza stone looks like. I set the platesetter legs down, then the stock grid, then the pizza stone. i don't have any ceramic feet. The stone was almost at the level of the gasket but not quite. I hear that the pizzas come out better if rasied higher in the dome, so I will try and figure out a way to get it higher.
Dough sitting for the final rise/rest. The recipe makes two 12-14" pieces, but i divided itinto three balls (about 120g each).
Leftover toppings from when we made pizzas in my stacked brick WFO over the holidays. Homemade sauce, bufala mozz, pepperoni, basil, onions, red bell peppers, and elk sausage I smoked a few days ago.
First pie rolled out. Had to work on it a little bit, adding flour until it stopped shrinking back. About 10" in diameter.
Almost hit 600°F. I could have gone higher if I had paid more attention to packing the lump in, wiggling, and lighting more lump when I started, but this was good enough. I was a little worried about frying the gasket, so didn't want to go nuclear the first time. Temps probably averaged 550°ish.
First pie was a margherita - my favorite!
View from the top vent. Cooked 3-4mins then turned 180° and cooked for another 3-4mins.
First BGE pie! [Sorry the pic is blurry].
Gratuitous upskirt shot.
2nd pie - sauce, pepperoni, bell pepper, parmesan, red onions.
The crust was thin, crispy, and flavorful. The best pizza I have made yet.
Last pie was a garbage pizza - put on whatever we had left. Sauce, basil, parmesan, bufala mozz, bell peppers, red onions, elk sausage.
Overall, it was a resounding success!! When I fire up the stacked brick WFO, it ends up being over a half-day affair. With the egg, we could enjoy pizza on a weeknight. The sauce was made before hand, and frozen in an ice cube tray, so I just took out 2 cubes per pie. Improvement for future cooks will include making the sauce more garlicky, not using 2 cured meats on the same pie (too salty for us), and experimenting with the dough to add some other flavors to it. I will also learn how to tend the fire better so I can maybe hit higher temps, but I don't see the need to really. Unless someone thinks there is some benefit to higher temps. I thoght I smelled the gasket vaporizing a few times, but it seems to have withstood the temps well.
Thanks for looking!
