Pizza Tips

dmourati

I have the LBGE with just a platesetter as my lone accessory for cooking and I want to get into making pizza. I have read a bit and looked at recent posts where folks have shared their pies. What I am missing is the grid/stone setup. I know that higher in the dome is preferred. Some folks call that process or technique "roofing" a pizza.

I reviewed some links at the ceramic grill store but honestly the Pappa Murphy references were a huge red flag to me and my pizza tastes.

Any other best practices I should review?
What is the current thinking on optimal setup?

I'm interested in doing Neapolitan style but I can be flexible. Thanks.

Foghorn

If I were you, I'd start out basic and then fine tune things.  A platesetter (legs up) with a grid on it and the stone on the grid is a good setup.  I'm far from an expert.  I use storebought dough.  The first step is to find the right temp for the pizzas you make.  I also envisioned myself making very thin pizza and cooking them very hot and fast.  My pizza technique hasn't developed to that level yet.  As a result, cooking at 700+ degrees doesn't work very well on the pies I make.   I've found that with the dough I use and the amount of toppings I put on, 450-500 is the sweet spot that doesn't overcook the crust relative to the toppings - or vice versa.  Really thick pizzas (think Chicago deep dish) cook at lower temps for longer times for this reason.

So, if you start with a basic set-up and guesstimate an optimal temperature based on the thickness of your pie (crank it up if you succeed at making a really thin pizza) you'll be off to a good start.  Then you can work on improving your pizza making technique while you browse options at the ceramic grill store or other places for getting your stone higher in the dome.  

That's my recommendation anyway.  If you get better info from someone who has really mastered the art of pizza, by all means, so what they recommend.  

And welcome aboard.  Remember to enjoy the journey.

Stormbringer

What @Foghorn said.

Pizza on the Egg is a fun journey and has many different destinations in terms of dough recipe and setup, a lot of it dictated by the type of pizza you want to make and the dough you use. This is where I ended up (inc. roofing, or raising into the dome), and I like the Neapolitan style too:

https://thecooksdigest.co.uk/2016/08/24/cooking-pizza-with-a-big-green-egg/

It's really important though to consider your dough recipe, specifically what temperatures they recommend cooking at.

dstearn

My setup is pretty basic, I use the CGS Adjustable Rig and the Woo 2 with the 17 inch stone. I place the stone on the grate and then 14 inch pizza stone on the top grate. I buy my pizza dough at my local pizzeria, have not attempted to make my own yet. We prefer thin crust so I roll it thin on a rolling mat and then transfer to a wooden peel. Make sure you add a small amount of corn meal on the peal prior to prevent the dough from sticking. I a layer of Mario Batali's pizza sauce then add cheese, then the veggies, add one more layer of cheese on the veggies and then the Italian Sausage and very important, a sprinkle of Italian Pizza Seasoning. 

I cook at 400-425 dome, make sure the pizza stone has preheated for an hour prior to launching the pizza on the stone. 

Based on my last cook, 18 minutes at 400-425 cooks all the ingredients well and yields a crispy crust.

SoCalSooner

Here's a link to an old post describing my set up. I get pretty consistent results here. Hope this is helpful. http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1206801/pizza-for-a-first-post-why-not#latest

Hans61

Rotate the pie 180 about half way through for even cooking 

orbbq

I found the secret to going high temp is to get pizza flour instead of regular flour.  Store bought flour is malted so that it turns golden brown in a 350-400 degree oven, but it scorches easily at higher temps in the egg.

I get my pizza flour on amazon and it made a night and day difference being able to cook a 700 degree pie without having black crust.

dmourati

I bought a book on pizza before getting the BGE. They have a free recipe for the dough and an intro on how to make home made pizza. I'll share the link with you here and suggest anyone who wants to up their game buy the book with the caveat that I don't speak (yet) from first hand knowledge.

https://thepizzabook.s3.amazonaws.com/pizza-book-recipe.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAISHFT2YHUO4ZYYTA/20171004/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20171004T151653Z&X-Amz-Expires=900&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=4efc1bddef7461522c157b1b63200f32d09f1f94e40a4e12419239dea161b917

fishlessman

my setup for the high temp pizzas is a deep pan filled with sand and a pizza stone sitting on it. (its actually round bottomed like a wok and helps with heat flow) the more heat sink you have at the 800 degree temps and up the better as the temp drops everytime you open the dome quickly and doesnt climb back up fast enough at the really high temps. im in the 550 range for the basic pizza and standard setup, 350/400 for deep dish. just a note for safety with temps in the 800 degree range, themal expansion loosens the bands and the dome can drop out, use extreme caution, i believe the new bands may have fixed this problem but have not seen them yet. have done crazy high temps, 1200 dome pies, the dome dropping is a serious issue

TideEggHead

Like others have said, our pizza journey is constantly evolving! To this point in the game we have stayed in the 450-500 range for our pies and we have had good success. I also have not made the jump to making my own dough just yet, we buy dough from the publix bakery. I usually get 2 pies from one lump of dough. Up until this point our experimenting has been limited to toppings, sauce, and temperature. I have a CGS pizza stone, 15 inch I believe, that I have been happy with. I broke 2 other stones before purchasing this one.

victor1

I'm far from an expert but have had pretty good success so far.  The first few I did were Papa Murphy's and then a couple from a local pizza place.  My setup is plate setter, legs up, grid, then bge raised grid with bge stone on top.  I usually preheat to the 650 to 700 degree range.  I purchased Caputo 00 flour (red bag) from Amazon and love the thin crust you can make from it.  Bake time is around 8 minutes or so. I find with the thin crust, its easier to spread out on parchment paper and bake for about 3 minutes to firm up the pizza and allow for pulling out the paper.  The dough is fairly easy to make and worth the effort.  Sauce? whatever you like.  Good luck and let us know how you do.

EggNorth

Also, one of the most important steps for me is to let the dough rest at room temperature, covered.  This makes it so much easier to work with.

Focker

If Neapolitan is what you desire, skip the egg, buy a Blackstone Pizza Oven.

Water, salt, yeast, and most important Caputo 00, make up NP dough.  That's it.  No oil.  No sugar.
Finally, a 60-120 second bake, is key.  Over this, and you're in New York style territory.  This was a NP a la BS Pizza Oven.

With the egg cranked wide open, with lump burning at it's peak, I could only get a 3 minute bake on the baking steel with sand in a wok.  This is not NP, but a NY pizza. 


One thing I learned, the egg is not a WFO. 

I do like pizza in the egg, especially the CI skillet Pizza Hut clone. 
Thin, cracker crust is good.  Deep Dish would shine too, although not my thang.  Sicilian, with it's focaccia-like dough, another solid option.  The egg has such long bake times, that NP and NY are not ideal, when compared to other styles, at lower temps and longer bake times, and oily dough to fry golden crunchy brown.

dmourati

@Focker, nice pizzas man. I initially said "Neapolitan style but I can be flexible."  That was my way of saying I know the BGE is not a WFO and that temps needed for a real Neapolitan are likely out of range.

I like many of the pizzas I see people churning out of the egg. I hope to add myself to that list pretty shortly here.

thetrim

Just did a cooking class on BGE pizza at a local place last week. I always poop the bed on pizza in the past, but I did learn some good, new, and radical ideas on how to master the pizza cook.  I go live tomorrow with a bacon cheeseburger pizza and a margherita pizza on the large.  If it goes well, I'll post it.  If you don't hear from me within two days, I f'd it all up and my large may be at the bottom of my pool!

QDude

Focker said:

If Neapolitan is what you desire, skip the egg, buy a Blackstone Pizza Oven.

Water, salt, yeast, and most important Caputo 00, make up NP dough.  That's it.  No oil.  No sugar.
Finally, a 60-120 second bake, is key.  Over this, and you're in New York style territory.  This was a NP a la BS Pizza Oven.

With the egg cranked wide open, with lump burning at it's peak, I could only get a 3 minute bake on the baking steel with sand in a wok.  This is not NP, but a NY pizza. 


One thing I learned, the egg is not a WFO. 

I do like pizza in the egg, especially the CI skillet Pizza Hut clone. 
Thin, cracker crust is good.  Deep Dish would shine too, although not my thang.  Sicilian, with it's focaccia-like dough, another solid option.  The egg has such long bake times, that NP and NY are not ideal, when compared to other styles, at lower temps and longer bake times, and oily dough to fry golden crunchy brown.

I agree!  The egg is not the best tool for pizza.  I also got a Blackstone pizza oven and that made my pizza journey so much better.  The temp on my XL would get out of control during pizza cooks and I ended up burning so many of them that I just quit using it for pizza.

northGAcock

QDude said:

Focker said:

If Neapolitan is what you desire, skip the egg, buy a Blackstone Pizza Oven.

Water, salt, yeast, and most important Caputo 00, make up NP dough.  That's it.  No oil.  No sugar.
Finally, a 60-120 second bake, is key.  Over this, and you're in New York style territory.  This was a NP a la BS Pizza Oven.

With the egg cranked wide open, with lump burning at it's peak, I could only get a 3 minute bake on the baking steel with sand in a wok.  This is not NP, but a NY pizza. 


One thing I learned, the egg is not a WFO. 

I do like pizza in the egg, especially the CI skillet Pizza Hut clone. 
Thin, cracker crust is good.  Deep Dish would shine too, although not my thang.  Sicilian, with it's focaccia-like dough, another solid option.  The egg has such long bake times, that NP and NY are not ideal, when compared to other styles, at lower temps and longer bake times, and oily dough to fry golden crunchy brown.

I agree!  The egg is not the best tool for pizza.  I also got a Blackstone pizza oven and that made my pizza journey so much better.  The temp on my XL would get out of control during pizza cooks and I ended up burning so many of them that I just quit using it for pizza.

Respectfully I disagree. The egg is a great tool for pizza, but requires practice and the right dough / temp alignment. Before you right it off, try the 00 Flour. When you get right,....there is much joy to be had. There is quite a bit of sweet equity required to get there though. 

Focker

QDude said:

Focker said:

If Neapolitan is what you desire, skip the egg, buy a Blackstone Pizza Oven.

Water, salt, yeast, and most important Caputo 00, make up NP dough.  That's it.  No oil.  No sugar.
Finally, a 60-120 second bake, is key.  Over this, and you're in New York style territory.  This was a NP a la BS Pizza Oven.

With the egg cranked wide open, with lump burning at it's peak, I could only get a 3 minute bake on the baking steel with sand in a wok.  This is not NP, but a NY pizza. 


One thing I learned, the egg is not a WFO. 

I do like pizza in the egg, especially the CI skillet Pizza Hut clone. 
Thin, cracker crust is good.  Deep Dish would shine too, although not my thang.  Sicilian, with it's focaccia-like dough, another solid option.  The egg has such long bake times, that NP and NY are not ideal, when compared to other styles, at lower temps and longer bake times, and oily dough to fry golden crunchy brown.

I agree!  The egg is not the best tool for pizza.  I also got a Blackstone pizza oven and that made my pizza journey so much better.  The temp on my XL would get out of control during pizza cooks and I ended up burning so many of them that I just quit using it for pizza.

Said this earlier on another thread, but pizza off of the egg is inferior to pizza off of the BS in every aspect.  Caputo 00, yeast from Mario Batali's underwear, unicorn tears, magical egg......it doesn't matter in the end, product.

jtcBoynton

dmourati said:

@Focker, nice pizzas man. I initially said "Neapolitan style but I can be flexible."  That was my way of saying I know the BGE is not a WFO and that temps needed for a real Neapolitan are likely out of range.

I like many of the pizzas I see people churning out of the egg. I hope to add myself to that list pretty shortly here.

Temps for a Neopolitan style are not out of range for an egg.  The configuration of the egg makes it trickier to use compared to a WFO, but you can get plenty of heat.  

dmourati

I stand corrected @jtcBoynton.

Botch

I've done pizzas with platesetter legs up/stone on grid, and legs-down w/a stone on the BigGreenFeet (steel nuts, pipe fittings, wadded foil all work equally well), can't see a difference.  I've never paid much attention to the idea of raising the pie further up into the dome, since a true stone pizza oven has a "ceiling" 3 to 4 feet higher up (some pizzaeeola-dudes lift the pie closer to the top the last few seconds, but still with a lot more room than in an Egg).  
Pizzas are like cuts of meat: thicker ones require lower, slower heat.  A Papa Murphy's at 425 is perfect (and don't dismiss them; when you get a craving at work at 1500, grabbing a PM on the way home is America At It's Finest!)  I cook my homemade Margheritas at 900, 90 seconds or so, at the felt line ( give the egg plenty of time to heat up everywhere to that temp).  
I don't feel I need to experiment with temps/levels anymore; dough, on the other hand, I've been tinkering with for years now and I still don't have a grip on it.  That's okay, challenges keep you engaged.  
Good luck with your journey, and Enjoy It!