Grill disaster

[bobframe]

My first experience with grilling a pizza on a stone on my gas fired grill did not turn out well....

I cranked it to max heat (three Nat Gas burners) and left stone (pretty thin, but worked well in electric oven) in there for quite a while (45 minutes??) to come up to temp.

Grill has no window, so all I could do was estimate the time needed...I gave it four minutes and then checked on it.

Stone had shattered on front corners.

Crust was black...but "kinda edible".

Toppings were cooked OK, but I'd have liked to have seen them better done.

Clearly I was disappointed but I like the idea of using the grill as it keeps the kitchen cool and gives us a second baking option if we are doing multiple pies...so I don't want to give up on the idea.

I just ordered a much thicker stone from a commercial restaurant supply house (looks like its probably similar to the 3/4" thick stone offered here.

So, where do I go from here?

[splatgirl]

Re: Grill disaster

Get an IR thermometer so you know what you're getting for temps. Sounds like you need less cook time and possibly less heat. Hard to say without any other info.

[Wiley]

Re: Grill disaster

I'll toss this in as perhaps something that may be helpful:

Back in my late 20's in Alaska we used to bake pizzas on a wood fired heating stove by heating a large cast iron frypan on one pot ring (the wood fired stove had two lift out cast iron circles which could be removed so the pan's bottom was directly over the fire). When good and hot we placed the pizza on the one ring that was in place and inverted the iron pan over the pizza. The now open hole was then covered with it's lid to keep fumes from entering the room. This process worked surprisingly well.

My suggestion would be to heat a large cast iron pan on top of your pizza stone at the same time as you are heating the stone. When good and hot remove pan, place pizza on the stone and place the inverted pan over the pizza. I don't think you will need to replace the BBQ cover/lid as the time needed to bake the pizza was very short once the pan was hot.

Also I would suggest you instead of a pizza stone to use splits of firebrick upon a piece of 1/4 inch or thicker steel plate to support the splits and so the flame would more evenly heat them. You could later use the splits in building a WFO. I would suggest leaving out the stone, but that perhaps would be heresy.

Hope this helps,
Wiley

[fxpose]

Re: Grill disaster

When I used to do pizza on the gasser I used a Lodge cast iron pizza pan on 2 firebricks (to raise it higher). Cooking was very even, bottom of crust and toppings.