Another pizza experiment on the BGE.

[caliking]

Made some pizzas on Sat night, and had been thinking about posting when I saw caseydog's thread about his cook for the Italian TD. Figured I would throw my hat into the ring as well. I'm posting here also, so folks can take a look.

Fired up the egg with some small pecan logs. I was trying to see if I could get some wood-fired oven flavor in the BGE. Got to christen my new mini Weber starter chimney too.




Threw in some orange peels too just to see what the aroma would be like. It was pretty nice - kind of like aromatherapy when starting a cook.



I'm cheaping out on the egg accessories. Returned the platesetter, Set a Weber 18.5" cooking grate on top of the fire ring. Set a clay saucer on that. Two bricks went next, then the stock BGE cooking grid on top. Found a Pampered Chef pizza stone at a garage sale, and put that on top of the BGE grid. The BGE ceramic feet are not made anymore, so I laid some clay pot feet from Lowes on the stone. Had to go sideways since my BGE pizza stone is bigger than the Pampered Chef stone. BGE stone went on the very top.






Cut up the groceries and laid them out to make assembling the pies easier. I used Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network site.



I figured the egg was hot enough when i saw this happening:


The thermo had lapped itself, so I was pretty sure it was hot! Choked it down to stabilize at ~650°F after this.


First pie was a margherita. This is the only pic I have of the cooked pies, so it will have to do. We made one Mediterranean pizza without sauce - EVOO, garlic, sundried tomatoes, olives. The last one was a garbage pizza - turkey pepperoni, bell peppers, parm, mozz, mushrooms, onions.



The pies were very tasty! The crust was nice and thin and crispy. I didn't know about the throwdown, otherwise I would have put more effort into taking better pics, but it was one of those nights when eating took a back seat to photography. I'm still learning how to cook on the egg, and its turning out be a real blast.

Thanks for looking!

[martyleach]

Dude, I am happy you got an Egg but I gotta believe that crust was burnt like crazy. At 650 you would have burnt it in a matter of minutes. Well hey, live and learn, right?
Pizza looks great though. Pizza on the egg around here is pretty special.
Thanks for the post and keep those pizza coming. They are good.

[JohnHB]

Yea I agree about 100F hotter than I would use. But the layers of clay/ceramics may have saved the day. With a crust "nice & thin& crispy" then it was a great job. The end product is what it is about.

[caliking]

Originally Posted by martyleach

Dude, I am happy you got an Egg but I gotta believe that crust was burnt like crazy. At 650 you would have burnt it in a matter of minutes. Well hey, live and learn, right?
Pizza looks great though. Pizza on the egg around here is pretty special.
Thanks for the post and keep those pizza coming. They are good.

Au contraire. The pies cooked for about 5-6 mins and were not charred or burnt. I liked the results when I cooked at 550ish before, so just wanted try something different. Besides, VPN specs call for oven temps of 905F (not that I'm aiming for VPN certification ). At that temp pies are done in 60-90 secs.

[AustinKnight]

What your made a retort the pie looks good brotha! My babycakes loves margherita pies, I farkin love pies in my Akorn I'm sure they taste as awesome on a Egg too. Speaking of cheap I got two 14" round cast iron flat top/griddle from Academy 12 buck a pop, I use one as a diffuser the other as the pan. I've been sprinkling cornmeal on foil and building my pies on the foil and then picking the foil up an placing it on the cast iron, makes it easy to pick up when done.

First plate

Second plate there both fairly thick

[DubfromGA]

Academy does have great prices on CI goods. ^^^^^^^^^^

[Dirt Daddy]

gotta love smoked pizza....

[caliking]

Originally Posted by AustinKnight

What your made a retort the pie looks good brotha! My babycakes loves margherita pies, I farkin love pies in my Akorn I'm sure they taste as awesome on a Egg too. Speaking of cheap I got two 14" round cast iron flat top/griddle from Academy 12 buck a pop, I use one as a diffuser the other as the pan. I've been sprinkling cornmeal on foil and building my pies on the foil and then picking the foil up an placing it on the cast iron, makes it easy to pick up when done.

Making pizza is much more time efficient on the egg than in my homebrewed WFO. I saw those CI griddles at Academy the other day and wondered about using it as a diffuser. I already had the clay saucer for my drum, but I might just pick one of those up. Do you buy your lump there too? I've been using B&B oak and it seems to work pretty darn good. Got a couple of bags with small pieces from a smaller hardware store, but the ones from Academy have nice big chunks of lump - especially if you pick up bags still on the pallet.

Originally Posted by DubfromGA

Academy does have great prices on CI goods. ^^^^^^^^^^

Academy has great prices on lotsa stuff! Usually buy bbq supplies there because their prices are so good. My go-to place for lump charcoal.

[Bluesman]

Is this also, a margherita pie........

[AustinKnight]

Originally Posted by caliking

Making pizza is much more time efficient on the egg than in my homebrewed WFO. I saw those CI griddles at Academy the other day and wondered about using it as a diffuser. I already had the clay saucer for my drum, but I might just pick one of those up. Do you buy your lump there too? I've been using B&B oak and it seems to work pretty darn good. Got a couple of bags with small pieces from a smaller hardware store, but the ones from Academy have nice big chunks of lump - especially if you pick up bags still on the pallet.



Academy has great prices on lotsa stuff! Usually buy bbq supplies there because their prices are so good. My go-to place for lump charcoal.

I think you'll really like the cast irons, I use one as a diffuser all the time unless I'm cooking steak. Ya I do buy it there I have to split a lot of it, the chunks that come out of the 20lb bags are huge. I'm a big fan of B&B oak lump there mesquite is good but burns faster.