Pizza Failure...

or why you should keep your placesetter or ceramic stones covered or clean.

Last night, we were going to make pizza on the Egg. Made up a batch of New York Style Pizza dough from Serious Eats website Sunday night (making sure I used bread flour this time, instead of Ap flour) along with some of the New York Sauce yesterday. Lit the Egg and decided I was going to try to use the adjustable rig for the first time making pizza. Got it all set up and temps were stabilizing around 500F, but man was it smoking. Smoking like a bunch of alcoholics at a meeting. I was really worried that if we tried to cook pizzas, they would come out to smokey. But I kept watching, figuring it would all burn off eventually. Finally gave up and started pre-heating the oven to 500F. Went to get my BGE pizza stone off and when I did, the oval ceramic stone burst into flames!! All I can think was that the last time I used it was for a brisket and I didn't foil it or use a drip pan. The stone must have absorbed a lot of drippings and when heated it released them and then they caught fire. Was too freaked out by it and just didn't think to take a picture of it up in flames. So we did make the pizzas after all, but in the oven. Only used 1/3 of the flour, so we'll try again maybe tomorrow or later this week. I was pleased with how the dough turned out and Mrs. G said it might be her favorite crust. Oh...and I also ruined mine by putting anchovies on it. We had some left over from making Caesar salads. Sounded like a good idea...never again on my pizza, thank you very little.