Pizza Time

Gandolf

Well, it's time for me to make my first attempts at pizza on the Egg. I've been reluctant to try after reading a number of pizza disaster stories here, but figger gotta jump in sometime and my son gave me a BGE stone as a gift, so the time is now. I've read a lot of pizza posts, so have a general idea how I'm going to do them. However, I am still confused about whether the stone should be "at temperature" when I put the pie on, or should it be cool and heat up during the bake? All advice about that and any other tips will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Tim M

Gandolf,[p]Mop is the local pizza expert here, but until he jumps in to straighten us all out I will toss in my $.02.[p]It really matters what your setup is. I use a setter and a pizza stone (not a whimpy one either). I let the setter remain in the cooker as it heats up to 550° or so. The bottom open and the slide daisy wide open will yield the perfect pizza temp in 20 min or so. Once the temp gets to 400° or so and the smoke from the last few meals quits, then I add my stone. I let it preheat for 10 min and add the pie. You can vary the preheat on your next try. If it burns, less preheat. If it cooks to slow, add more preheating. [p]There are pics on my website that might help you.[p]Tim

[ul][li]Tim's cookbook - etc[/ul]

Puj

Gandolf,[p]Tim has one out of two right ... the pizza stone advice is dead on for you to use as a guideline.[p]Mop, on the other hand, would rather buy pizza from any pizza joint than to "ruin his Egg" by baking a pizza. It's that damn smoke that gets him all riled ... which I for one would never want to get the ol' Mopper riled. [p]Mop, how's the great white north this summer?[p]Puj

Big-R

Gandolf, we've done pizza on the oven a bunch and on the egg a few times. Alway pre-heat your stone to 500+ degrees. You want the pizza to cook from the bottom up. Practice with the temp and the dough until you find the combo that works for you. Thinner dough and hotter stone yeild crispier crust..........[p]Enjoy the process.[p]Randy

The Naked Whiz

Gandolf,
I think Tim means Spin is the local pizza expert. Certainly not Mop, unless Mop has been doing some recent work in the field. :-)[p]Here is a link to my pizza page. I have some thoughts on heating the stone there. But the bottom line is that you have to experiment extensively, preparing and consuming pizza after pizza until you have perfected your technique. I think research has also shown that large quantities of beer will help you consume the large quantities of pizza.[p]TNW
[ul][li]The Naked Whiz's Recipe Page [/ul]

The Naked Whiz

Gandolf,
One obvious comment, that I guess I should have made in my first post is that you absolutely do NOT want to put the pie on a cold stone. The stone must be preheated in some fashion, to some degree. The hot stone makes for a good crust and adds a blast of heat to aid in the initial push to get the dough to rise, if you are doing normal pizza crust. Just think about the pizza joints you have been in. They run their pizza ovens all day long and the baking surface is always nice and hot. Same for all those "wood fired ovens" that seem to be trendy these days. Or is that trend over? I'm always a little behind on trends.[p]TNW
[ul][li]The Naked Whiz's Recipe Page[/ul]