The Gasket is Toast!

Yes. But there have been many reports of early gasket failure while doing pizza. I lost one that was about a week old during pizza #2.

I'm of the opinion that a new gasket isn't really air tight. Usually, the pizza set-up diverts the very hot gasses right at the gasket. As the hot gases pass thru the slightly porous felt, the material just bubbles away. While I agree with the general opinion that the stock gasket simply will not last, and should be considered expendable, I've had reasonable longevity by doing a a bunch of low and slow cooks before going high temperature. My guess is that the mixture of soot and grease forms a good seal, and the hot gasses can barely pass thru.

While many Eggers replace the stock gasket with other materials, such as very expensive Cotronics ceramic material, a fair number just cook without. For me, its been easy enough to change gaskets, altho irksome, that I'm still using the standard felt.

I'm maybe lucky. Both mine are at 20 months, and not quite gone.  A week ago, I was pre-heating for bread baking, and let myself get distracted. I returned to the Egg w. the dome above 700, the pizza stone above 600. A portion of the old gasket was actually bubbling. Shut it down some, cooked the bread, and found I still had about a 1/8" left.  Figure I've got another month or so till it goes on the old cruddy thing.

Somewhere on this forum I read when baking pizza to use the place setter with the legs up, keeping the heat below the gasket line.  Haven't tried it as yet but wish I had of read that before my first pizza cook.

That was also passed on to me by the mothership when I put in for a nomex after burning mine.

Don't compromise your cooking because of the gasket.  And if you heat the egg past the melting point of the felt gasket, it degrades...first time your use it or the 101st.  It's an organic gasket, the melting point doesn't change because it's seasoned or you're using hickory rather than apple wood, etc.  My $0.02 as a chemist/scientist.

my first cook doing pizza and the second was legs done (bye bye gasket of course) i've since gone legs up with my grid on and raise my pizza stone up 3 inches on the grid higher into the dome and the pizza's turn out great no problem reaching 500 + that way and the stone gets plenty hot enough 

I undercooked my toast the other day and it tasted like gasket.

Mine thought that comment was sweeeeet.  (awwwwwww)

Gaskets are totally overrated. Just keep the edges scraped clean and you won't even miss it.

2 days past and still no response to my email with pics about my fried gasket on 1 month old mini. I had an email on something else go unanswered in the past.