New Idea? Old Idea? UDS as a pizza oven

In one of my chore runs last week I saw some 16" pizza stones on sale for $10.00 each. I nearly grabbed two because the immediate idea of trying to make pizza on a UDS hit me.

I'm thinking a pizza stone on each cooking level in a 2 level unit. Dial up the heat to 300, slide in a couple pizzas and see how it runs?

This idea has got to be circulating out there someplace. I'm just so fresh on the dynamics of cooking on a UDS that I can see the stones working excellently for baking, or am I stretching?

Hmmm, smoked bread/crust?

The problem is most pizza is cooked @ much hotter temps than the UDs can hold. You could cook it, but you'd prolly be lookin @ chewy dough.

I've seen temps up around 350 in my UDS during that heat spike when I load my charcoal basket. I was thinking, approximating I'd be able to maintain a 300 or perhaps higher for an hour or two.

With a 16" stone on the lower cooking grate it would sort of build in the heat diverter. It would certainly have more crisping heat than the top stone in a 2 level UDS.

There are plenty of threads around about people doing cornbread and the like in their warmers, low and slow.

Guess I'll have to drop 20.00 for 2 stones, a couple of cheap frozen pizzas and make a new thread? Give me a couple days LOL

PatioDaddio said:

I've done it, and it works well.

John

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that looks mighty good...how did you cook it?

Sorry no photo pron but wanted to update this thread with my experiences.

I picked up 2 pizza stones from Big Lots, $10.00 each, 16" stones.

I first tried a cheapo frozen pizza in my Flat top/1 cooking level UDS. Opened up 3" of air-intake and the UDS ran around 350 degrees constant. The top of the pizza/cheese didn't want to brown up, the crust did, we ate it anyways, there was some smokey goodness to it and we couldn't resist. Pizza package said to cook at 375 for 14 minutes, ours went about 25 minutes at 350.

Round 2: Used a Weber topped, 2 cooking level UDS. Put a 16" pizza stone on each cooking grate. Again, 3" intake 4" exhaust, about 350 degrees constant. We were hungry and ended up with a pizza on each level. Some logic lead us to believe the lower cooking grate/pizza stone would have browned/crisp bottom and the Weber lid would reflect heat making the top cooking level/pizza stone brown on top. Must have been beer logic cause the results were not what we expected.

The stones diffuse the heat nice. Surprisingly to us, the lower cooking level, trapped between two pizza stones, produced the ideal "baking" results. Somehow those two stones created a nice reflective heat system. The pizza placed between the two stones crisped up on the bottom and the cheese and toppings browned up nice too.

In both runs I used RO Lump, no wood for smoke. The cooking process added some smoke flavor, the best results came from cooking the frozen pizzas between two cooking levels with stones on each.

I need to modify my UDS lids a touch for more exhaust to attempt 4" open air-intake, maybe 6" exhaust to insure updrafts. I'm hoping to ramp the UDS up to a 375 range.

At 375 with two stones I'm thinking I could just about bake anything you'd like to have some smoke added to. I'm imagining sides of pizza, corn bread, and the like.

Sounds great, think I'll have to give this a try. Haven't really seen how hot I can get my UDS, this may be a great way to try that out.

If there is one style of cooking that has more impassioned advocates than 'Q, it is probably pizza. The problem basically is cooking a pizza is similar to cooking bbq--depending on what you are starting with determines how you are going to cook it. Deep dish, new york, Sicilian, Roman, 'Californian' all take different techniques, so wondering if you can cook a pizza in a UDS is like wondering if you can cook beef in a hot environment

Thick pizzas or frozen pizzas are much more conducive to lower temps such as a UDS. Thin-crust-made-from-scratch love really high temps, with some anthracite fueled ovens getting as hot as 1200F (now that's a 90 second pizza). For a solid, middle of the road pizza 600-650F is about perfect, unless the crust has already been cooked.

Oh geez swamprb, that looks pretty nice already. How long can you maintain a hot burn in there? Also, how many peels do you own (I only have one heavily loved one)

Decent pizza making uses temperatures that are the opposite of decent Q. If you want to good good pizza, the temperatures start at 500°F and things just get better as you get hotter.