I tried making pizza on my kettle with a pizza stone for the first time. The technique seems like it has some potential for making great pizza, however in my effort to make sure the dough was cooked through, the bottoms tended on the black side.

Anybody have some basic rules that they follow when trying this?

It's not a temp issue. I fired my pizzas in a oven that was sitting at 650, when I worked in a small italian restaurant long ago.

Use equal parts cornmeal and flour to dust the bottoms of the dough. It will help prevent the burning and sticking. This helps create a bit of an airspace or insulation underneath the dough. The transfer of heat energy to a dry surface isn't as efficient as if it was a moist surface that sticks to the stone. So a dry bottom will definitely do the trick.

This is my set up for grilled pizza on the gasser. Same set up would work nicely on a kettle. Showed a friend (Don Irish member on the boards)this set up. See his picture.

 http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd189/doleary703/setup.jpg 

Basically the set up is: foil down on the grates, upside down cast iron pan, pizza stone. I agree with Tom, not a temp issue and this set up provides the airspace for heat transfer to the stone.

Chris

Here's the problem I have had. How do I get the pizza onto the stone after I heat it up? I hae one of those big paddles but can't seem to get it off there without messing it up.

I am actually going to use pizza screens for my next ones so will let you know how that goes.

Bob

Bob,

See Tom's reply above. Corn meal and flour the pizza peel so the pie will slide right on to the stone.

Chris

Dust the pizza as suggested and it will slide off the paddle (peel) easily.

The set up Chris showed me works great! Dust the dough with corn meal and flour - pizza comes out great

Some folks sprinkle a little cornmeal (grits -- coarse cornmeal -- work even better, like ball bearings) on the peel, top them with a square of parchment, sprinkle fine or coarse cornmeal very lightly on the parchment (easier to remove it from the bottom of the pizza after baking), and then put their stretched dough on the parchment. Add the toppings and slide the pie onto your stone without any sticking. The parchment will brown but won't burn.

Rita

The first pizza I flopped on the stone and topped after it was in position, this was the least burned of the two, but very bubbly and just starting to brown on top. The second one I did more of a raichlen thing where I flipped the dough after a minute or so and then topped it. The dough stayed a lot flatter, but this one ended up being pretty burnt.

I was hoping for some hard and fast rules, but I suppose temps will very greatly along with dough thicknesses.

I'm aware of the cornmeal trick, but since I was "flopping and topping" I didn't bother. Its really interesting that it has a practical purpose in cooking as well. thanks for the info.

quote:

Originally posted by Rita Y:
Some folks sprinkle a little cornmeal (grits -- coarse cornmeal -- work even better, like ball bearings) on the peel, top them with a square of parchment, sprinkle fine or coarse cornmeal very lightly on the parchment (easier to remove it from the bottom of the pizza after baking), and then put their stretched dough on the parchment. Add the toppings and slide the pie onto your stone without any sticking. The parchment will brown but won't burn.

Rita

I've become a big fan of the parchment paper. I used to use cornmeal but the parchment paper alone works great and is less messy. I never tried to combine them as Rita does but I'm sure that is good too.

What temps do you shoot for when doing pizza on the grill? Hot as possible? Using lump or briquettes?

Ray, I've now done pizzas twice, first time around 450, last night at 500. 500 seemed to be the ticket for me. I used RO Lump. Haven't done homemade yet, just did the Papa Murphy take-and-bake. Now that I've got the setup down I'm going to try homemade next Friday.

Don, that pizza looks awesome!!!

quote:

I'm going to try homemade next Friday.

`
Larry, dont know what its like in your neck of the woods but everybody's yards around here are popping with cherry tomatoes. My kitchen was becoming a collection of little bags of them from various friends and neighbours, so I decided to oven dried a couple of sheet pans worth in my oven in an attempt to preserve them before my house became a fruit fly flophouse. Long story short, these tomatoes were amazing, bursting with flavor. I ended up using half in a sauce that night and the rest on a grill pizza two days later (so much for preserving them).

If you can, oven dry some tomatoes (smoke some even ), toss them on top of the dough with some torn basil and fresh mozzarella and you're in business.

I used to do the cornmeal on the stone and peel and it worked great.

Then I tried the parchment and it worked even better! The big difference i think was when I had a lot of toppings the parchment seemed to ease the process of getting the whole pizza on and off the peel and stone without stretching the dough.

I had no problems with cornmeal but I'll only be using parchment from now on.

I've always used the dusted wood paddle only when making pizza with good success. I haven't tried it on the grill, which I definitely want to try as well as improve my dough prep. Anyway - maybe a dumb question, did the parchment go onto the stone with the pizza? I'm thinking it would burn at high temps...

To clarify, the reason I sprinkle a little cornmeal on the parchment too is to make it easier to remove the parchment after baking, especially when using doughs with high hydration. When I remove the pizza I try to slide the peel between the parchment and the crust.

I personally prefer a thin aluminum peel. I've used wooden peels and find that dough sticks less to them than to the metal peels when sliding pizzas off, but I find that the wooden peels that I've used are too thick when removing the pies and they tended to push the pizza around. Parchment on a metal peel works best for me.

Rita

quote:

Originally posted by Rita Y:
When I remove the pizza I try to slide the peel between the parchment and the crust. Rita

Thanks, got it!

Ray, you brought up a good point about parchment and high temperatures.

I've been using it under my pizzas for years in a convection oven at 550°F (575°F regular oven). It does get a little brittle and darkens on the edges at those temperatures, but is fine under the pizza, which might be a good argument for trimming the paper to the size of the pizza.

However, I've just been doing a little research and find that parchment (which is silicone impregnated) is said to be good for uses up to 475°F.

That's not going to keep me from trying it when I get around to using my stone on my gasser, though, because the pizza dough will protect it. But I'll trim the paper to the size of the pizza for good measure and for convenience in removing it after baking.

Rita

quote:

did the parchment go onto the stone with the pizza? I'm thinking it would burn at high temps...

yep, parchment on with the pizza throughout the cook. It burns a little around the edges but doesn't affect flavor or cause any other problems.
I'l try posting a photo of a pork, spinach, garlic and feta pizza I did on which parchment was especially helpful.

you can see the parchment got a little brown- I thinik I cooked this at about 550 for 15 minutes or so. Usually I cook 'em at 650 but I screwed up and was running out of charcoal.

Oh my! That's serious pizza!
Rita