Bambino,
I know there is alot of info on this thread.
There are many 2stone users who haven't
posted anything..... and many who have...
with a quick search here are some I came
up with.
MbusseOK, so here is my story while I have it all in my head.
As I said, I have been lurking around here for a few months soaking up knowledge. I have been cooking what I thought was pizza at home for about 20 years. Then I stumbled upon this site, now I am really making pizza at home. I felt compelled to post tonight as I had a breakthough in taste, and wanted to give back to the group. While I am still a rookie in relation to several of you, I can provide some insights for this post.
So, when I first found this site, I tried all the recipes. I really fell in love with the Lehman NY Style Recipe. I have been making for a few months now. I have figured out the key is quality ingredients and a little knowledge and HIGH HEAT. While I really liked the Lehman recipe, it still lacked something, mind you I am cooking in a gas home oven running at 500F. I purchased a Pizza Grill from Willard a few weeks back. I had a lot of problem with not achieving high heat still. The problem turned out to be my regulator was shot, my burners were dirty, I was using a Blue Rhino Tank, and my grill surface area was too large. I have been working closely with Willard and he has been there along the way to provide suggestions. In the end covering my grill surface area with aluminum foil did the trick by funneling all the heat from 4 burners in the the PG. Tonight I tried my first pizza using the new setup. I had an air temp in the PG of 800-900F, the outside grill thermometer read 550F, the Stone read surface temp of 600F ( I could have gotten the stone hotter had I let her preheat longer). So, this was my first pizza cooking in high heat, I was a little nervous as I was not sure what to expect. I slid the pizza off the peel, 3 minutes later she was done. My first bite was amazing, I was tasting things I had not previously tasted using the same recipe. The tomato was of fuller flavor, the crust had way more flavor, and the char taste was wonderful. The one thing that was missing was the full on crust taste, and the slight scrips on the outside of the cornicone, yet light and airy inside. This was sheer nirvana eating this pie tonight. I have finally found that high heat will take your pizza to a few more levels beyond where you are with a home oven at 500F. I was using the Lehman Formula at 64% hydration, no sugar as I was afraid with the high heat it may burn.
I still have lots of practice to perfect cooking at high heat, you need to move a little quicker. I also want to experiment now with Neapolitan and caputo since I have the heat that is needed. I also ordered up some Italian starter from sourdo.com to see what it will do for my pizza. I would like to try PFtaylor's raquel also.
So much to try and so little time. BTW, I was on a business trip in Phoenix last week and tried Pizzeria Biancos. In a nutshell it was wonderful and Chris is just very down to earth and a genuinely nice person, and very philosophical when it comes to talking pizza.
So, thanks again to all for the knowledge, and keep spinning that dough.
Mark
I just wanted to throw out some tips for using the 2Stone in a Jenn-Air grill in particular, or really probably any gas grill.
When I first received my 2Stone, I could only get my 52K BTU Jenn-Air to 450F internally temp of the grill
according to the Thermometer on the outside of the grill. My stone surface temp was only 500F, the 2stone air temp only about 600F.
Here are the things I did to get higher heat.
1. If your grill is more than 2 years old, remove the burners and clean them using a drill bit just slightly smaller
than the holes in the burner, ream the hole for a few seconds until it is clean. To remove the burners, just remove
the small cotter pin at the bottom rear of each burner, then the burner will easily lift out, putting the burner back
is just as simple. You do not need to replace the cotter pin as it is only used for shipping. My burners were cast iron,
I gave them a good tapping on concrete to remove all of the loosened particles.
2. Replace the regulator. The stock one is garbage. You can pick up a universal char broil regulator at lowes for about
15.00. It comes with the regulator and hose so replacement is as simple as loosening the nut and removing the hose and
regulator assembly from your grill.
3. If you are using a Blue Rhino tank, call around to your local Natural Gas suppliers in your town, ask how much for a new tank
and fill. I paid 40.00 for a brand new tank and fill. Refills are 18.00. You only need to look into using a non Blue Rhino tank if you
still are not able to achieve high heat after doing Step 1 & 2 & 4 & 5. THe reason for this is posted above in a separate post.
4. Remove the Heat Shields from the top of the burner, these just lift off, very simple. This allows the full heat to rise straight up
from the burner.
5. Place the 2Stone over the burners in a way that you are covering the largest flame surface. Next line heavy aluminum foil all around the 2Stone as shown in my post above, this is the key to getting the really high heat in the 2Stone. This will funnel all of the heat from the bottom directly into your 2Stone. Now we are cookin!
After doing these things, I now achieve 550F on the Grill thermometer. I get about 700F on the stone, I get what looks like 900F+ on the air temp inside the 2Stone, I used an oven thermometer that goes to 500F, I put it in the 2Stone and after about a 15 minute preheat with all 4 burners on high, the needle was way past 500F, which is why I have to guess at the temp being around 900F. NOTE: I preheat with the grill lid closed. I also close the grill lid while I cooked my first pie on it. I will do more testing with the lid open while cooking to see if I notice any heat loss in the 2Stone.
I went through a lot of trial and error and frustration trying to get the 2stone to achieve high heat. No fault of Willard's mind you, Willard has been great supporting me after the purchase. It was just my grill and some of the things you need to do to prepare. I would be curious to hear what kind of temps folks are getting with their grills, be it gas or charcoal. For the low cost I think this is a great piece to add to your equipment needed to produce a really satisfying pie. I am really really happy now and have lots of testing and tweaking to do. Willard's new oven that uses the bayou burner should work really well for folks that do not own a grill. I am guessing that thing will get above 1000F.
I will be cooking up some neapolitan and NY Style this weekend. I will post results and more pictures in order to help others out. One thing I cannot get over is how much improved the pizza is when using these high temps vs. a home oven. For those of you that are at this stage, I am sure you would agree. For those that are still using a home oven, I highly recommend you look into this solution. The results still blow me away. I would never have thought that heat could have played into it this much.
BTW, is anyone aware of an oven thermometer that goes to say 1000F? I do have an IR Thermometer, but it only measures surface temp.
I would like to accurately measure air temp. I have searched on Amazon and such, but cannot find anything.
Mark
Received my pizza oven casing today, had just enough time to give it a test run and wanted to share.
I let it heat up for about 15 minutes at the highest setting on the bayou regulator.
I did not use a baffle for the first run, although I will as I want more separation in temps between air and the stone.
As you can see, I achieved 1024F air temp and 875F - 913F stone temp. Air temp measured with a thermal probe at about
the center of the oven.
I will be doing more testing this weekend and actually cooking up some pizza in it, should be fun.
Mark
I will be playing with the aluminum foil trick on the top stone to see if I can get more cooking heat to the top
of the pizza. I also want to see about a 200F difference between the air temp and the stone temp. I just need
a little practice to dial things in. This is just sheer fun. I cannot image what it would be like to own a wood fired oven.
I think the PG oven is a great cheaper alternative until the day I can build the real deal.
While I did like the pizza grill on my grill and had it working, I like this setup with the bayou an oven housing MUCH better.
If there is anyone on the fence with purchasing and would like to ask questions, please feel free. I hate to sound like a
broken record but, this high heat REALLY takes your pizza to a new level.
Mark
I am using the Pizza Oven for NY Style. I experimented early on when I only had the grill model, but could not achieve enough heat for Neapolitan style which I was also interested in. Since then I have purchased the oven casing for the grill model. I have been doing just NY style. I also plan on experimenting soon with Neapolitan. The key is to use a high hydration for your dough of around 62-63%, this is because you will want to cook it in the high heat range of 700-800F, this will get you a slight crisp on the outside and a fluffy, cotton like, inside for the conicione, these are the results I just could not achieve in my home oven. You will really enjoy the high heat for your NY style. At heart, I am NY style and am thrilled with the pizza oven. With that being said, between the pizza grill and pizza oven, I would recommend the oven over the grill by far. My reasons are the following:
1. With the pizza oven, you can achieve heat ranging from the standard home oven of 500-550F, all the way up to 1000+ if you so desire, this would allow you to do thin, NY style, and Neapolitan, if you so wish.
2. Very fast preheat times, I can have it up to 700-800F in about 15 minutes. With the grill model, it usually took 30-45 minutes, thus wasting more propane.
3. It became a pain to tie up my grill all lined with aluminum foil, (see previous pics in this thread), when I wanted to do some grilling, as in steaks, and have to remove the pizza grill, then put everything back.
4. In the rain or cooler months, I can move the pizza oven to my garage and have pizza whenever I wish, this part is just great!
5. You use less propane as you are only dealing with a single burner, instead of multiple burners, which most grills have today.
6. No messing with charcoal, who wants to wait an hour to make a pie, I sure do not, 15 minutes and I am sliding my pie into 800F, 3 minutes later I am pulling out sheer bliss. (See previous pics in this thread of some of my NY Style).
7. Portability, I could take this setup anywhere, camping, friends house, etc, and be making pizza in minutes.
I absolutely love my pizza oven, and feel the only thing better will be a wood fired brick oven. Just keep in mind, that high heat, especially on the stone means you MUST have high hydration in the 62-64% range, else you will burn the bottom of the crust in no time. With this range of hydration, you will achieve beautiful leoparding on the bottom. There is a little learning curve with the pizza grill or oven vs. the home oven as you are now dealing in higher heat and things happen fairly quickly, but that is part of the fun, you really begin to understand pizza and the technique behind making it. I really struggled with my NY style in the regular oven before getting my pizza oven, while it was good, I was not getting that slight crisp on the outside and tender, soft inside. I did not know what was missing, until you begin to cook in high heat, you just really do not think much about heat and how it relates to the final product. I understood with my first pie in the pizza oven, it was that first bite that told me I had achieved what I was searching for. And in the end the answer was the high heat. I know it sounds so simple and a normal person would not think it would play that much into the finished product, but I am here to tell you it does. I am sure the other pizza oven, or pizza grill, or wood fired oven owners would agree.
If you have any more questions, I am happy to try to answer them.
Mark
HopgeekWillard, you were spot on when you said that the 2stone would take my pizzas to the next level... the texture and bake quality was by far better than anything I have attempted so far.
Here's the 2nd pizza I baked tonight. It featured fennel salami, fresh basil, mutz, grated grana padano & crushed cento italian non-dop tomatoes.
More pies here:
http://pizza.hopgeek.com/14_Oct_2007_Pizzas.htmlI used my 2stone pizza oven for the first time yesterday and was really pleased with the results. Unfortunately I have no pics, but i baked about a dozen sourdough flat breads using 50% caputo farina 00 and 50% king arthur bread and 63% hydration. The dough balls were 85g each and I just topped them with some olive oil and salt. I brought these over to Thanksgiving dinner at a friends house. I later received what I consider to be a hell of a compliment -- a friend's date saw my flat breads and asked if they were wood fired pizza breads? I told her that I didn't have a wood burning oven, but that is what I was trying to emulate. She mentioned that she grew up in Naples and visits at least a couple times a year. She said they looked like real Neapolitan crusts! That made my day.
MWTCI just wanted to share some of my first results with the 2stone Oven.
These were baked in a 1-1/2 inch tin steel pan.
The oven was preheated for 20 minutes with the gas maxed out. The bottom stone was 750 degrees.
I am really impressed with the improvement of the entire pizza as a whole. The high heat really improves everything, even the cheese and toppings including the dough. WOW !!!
Thank-you Willard. I hope you sell a million of them. You deserve all the rewards of bringing this oven to the people. Its just what we needed to complete the picture. High heat.
ScottfsmithHere are my first 2stone results.
I had a thermoprobe in the back left corner to measure air temp and an IR gauge to measure stone temp. My grill is a Fire Magic which I think is 64K BTU. First picture below shows setup: I put the 2stone directly on the heat reflector plates to get it closer to the heat. That generally worked well, but it was hard to get the pies out since the stone was a bit below the front of the grill.
First pie: ~850F on the stone and ~900F air temp. Cooking time 1.5 minutes. Thats the first two pictures. It burned a little on the bottom.
Second pie: >975F on the stone (it tilted my gauge) and ~1000F air temp. I noticed it was starting to burn on the bottom after 30 seconds (!) so I pulled it then. It was still completely cooked on the top but was underdone. I knew this stone temp was too hot but hungry kids were waiting so I didn't have the time to cool down the stone.
This was a Neopolitan dough recipe with Caputo 00. I don't measure but I roughly follow the standard Neo recipes with 55-65% hydration, high salt, low yeast (IDY), and nothing else. It was under-proofed (4 hrs), had to start too late today.
Overall, the 2stone is doing the main thing I need: getting me more HEAT!! That has been my main problem up to now, 700F is the max I have been able to hit. It is going to be some work to figure out the balance between stone and air temp. My guess is you need something like 1000F air / 800F stone to get the proper cooking (?) There are lots of things that can be tried, e.g. trying with it on the grill grate, wrapping the bottom spinning part in alu foil, cooling down the stone, etc.
I am really looking forward to more experiments with the 2stone, and feel like I may finally be able to get something close to Neopolitan pies on my grill. The pizzas were not perfect, but I felt like I finally understood what the style was all about: the slices were floppy, and the crust was soft light and airy, not crunchy.
Scott
Heres my latest round. I think I finally got the 2stone tuned correctly. I had foil on the outer inch or so of the stone, including up the sides, to get that area relatively cooler since it was burning too much there. Also foil on from the 2stone sides to the edge of the grill, but not in front. I heated up to 700F with the lid 4" open and after that went to 1' open lid. These openings gave me the optimal heat-increase on my grill. It took around 25 mintutes to get the stone to 850F. I popped the pie in at that point; the air temp was about 975F. The pie cooked for 1 1/2 minutes and the air temp was 800F at the end. The pizza itself was made by my 7-year-old so it had a flaw or two, in particular too much sauce. I also folded it a bit getting it on the stone, oops. But the point is the leoparding and the bottom both look excellent, within my interpretation of the Neapolitan standard. The top could have used more heat, in particular with the over-saucing, but I'm not going to complain.
I also attach a temp profile. I cooked two pizzas, and the two sudden drop points are pizza-in points and two quick rises are pizza-out points (at each pizza-out point there is a spike: first way up since the pizza is out, then way down because I killed the heat). I killed the heat between the two pies so the stone would not overheat and that worked excellently since the next pizza also had a similar stone and air temp. I can add labels to the graph if you are having trouble picking out the points.
Scott
Willard, I think the fact that I have been able to get it to such high temps shows how flexible the design is. Overall I think you have made one amazing device here.
For the other people who may be getting one I wanted to list the tips & tricks I have found so far. These I believe hold whether you are making NY style or Neapolitan or any other.
• It is very important to put the pizzas in at a consistent stone temperature. If the stone is too hot you will burn and if too cold will undercook the crust. I think an IR gun is the best way to achieve this, but there are probably other ways. I also found it very helpful to put a temperature probe in the 2stone to measure the air, but that is probably not as critical if you at least fixed the stone temp. It will take some experimentation to find the ideal stone temp for your grill and style.
• Be aware that the air temperature is going to drop when you put the pizza in. It is dropping 150-200F for me when starting at 1000F. At lower start temps it will not drop so far but will also go down. There is just not enough heat stored up in the stone etc to keep it high. This drop is not happening in a wood- or coal-burning oven which has huge reserves of heat. I don't think its all that bad a thing but it does mean you need to get the temp way up at the start since it will be progressively coming down. It also means you need to wait a couple minutes between pizzas to let it warm back up again.
• If you are not putting the next pizza in right away, you probably want to kill the heat for a bit to keep the stone from over-heating. I was always burning my second pizza until I learned to do this.
• I originally was doing just a couple big rotations of the spindle during cooking, but that did not produce consistent results. The best I found is many small rotations. For the 1 1/2 minute pizza I like one every ~5 seconds; probably you can go slower on a less hot bake.
• You will get more heat if you can put the 2stone lower in the firebox of your grill, below the grate level. I have mine sitting on the heat radiator plates. Since the stone is a bit below the front of the grill in this configuration you need to use the poker to grab the pizza when you pull it out. After I get the metal peel under the pizza I grab the crust with the provided metal poker. If you don't grab it, it will slip off.
• The 2stone front is narrow and a standard peel may be too wide. I had ordered the aluminum peel with my 2stone and it came in extra handy since my wood peel does not fit.
• Blocking any grill area on the sides of the 2stone will help get the temperature up. Blocking in front of the 2stone on the other hand is not a good idea. I have my 2stone sitting all the way back against the back of the grill.
• If you are having problems with burning right along the edges of the crust bottom, take the stone out and run alu foil along the edge about 1-2" in. Have the shiny side out. Alu foil blocks heat radiading into the stone at that point.
I'd like to hear comments on these or other tips/tricks people have found.
Scott
I wanted to pick up the topic awhile back about possibly adding more thermal mass on the top of the 2stone. Tonight I put my big square pizza stone on top of the top stone, so I had more than double the "brick mass" up there -- a 3stone! I had alu foil shiny side down on the top, and then for good measure I put the 2stone alu lid on top of that. I didn't plug in my logger to show you a graph, but I did have the air temp probe in and I was clearly noticing less temp drop upon putting the pizzas in, more in the 50-100F range instead of 150-200F. So I think a bit more mass on top may be a good thing, as we were speculating awhile back. The pies came out the best I have ever had, WoW! The taste could also have been helped by the fact that I finally started weighing ingredients and learned I was making the dough much drier than I had thought, more like 50%. These pizzas tonight I made at 60% hydration and it was a totally different pie. The only downside is one stuck on my alu paddle since I am not used to the wetter dough. However I think I am now completely converted to the 2stone, so I can take my circular saw to my wood paddle and make it fit!
Scott
MmarstonThe 2Stone is great, Thank you Willard!!!
It finally stopped raining and I was able to make my first 2Stone pies.
I preheated the pg for ½ an hour and the air temp was around 750-800 with the grill thermometer at 600. Both pies were cooked for 4 minutes give or take. I was hoping to get a bit more char on the bottom and perhaps let the top get a bit too charred.
Both pies were much better than anything I’ve made in my kitchen oven.
I preferred the texture of the DiFara clone over the 00. The flavor of the 00 was better however and my next pies will omit the EVO from the DiFara recipe.
Both recipes had the same hydration and IDY but the 00 did not rise quite as much as the DiFara. I’ll try the 00 with a bit more yeast at some point after I replace my regulator and maybe get the 2Stone closer to the burners.
I still have 1 ball of each in the fridge that I’ll make tomorrow or the next day to see how the longer rise affects them.
I decided to do a Bayou test before dinner to be sure everything worked properly.
I used the DiFara clone recipe I posted a while back.
Flour 100% 75% 00/25% KASL
Water 62%
IDY .4%
Salt 2%
tf .08 for both
Proof yeast in water for 10 minutes, add to other ingredients and mix in KA for 9 minutes. Room temp rise for 2 hours, punch down, fold, divide into balls and then into the fridge for 1 day. Rise on counter for 2 hours and bake.
The oven heated up in 15 min with a stone temp of 850. The pie cooked in about 2 min.
Next time I'll turn down the flame a bit after the stone gets hot to avoid charing the top quite so much.
I suspect I'll eventually end up getting the temperature monitoring equipment that Mark posted.
This was the best pizza I have made to date! Thank you Willard for a great solution to the high temperature problem. For the moment my lust for a wood fired oven has cooled. I'll be trying a straight 00 next.
BolabolaThank you abatardi but I've tried 2 pic downloading sites and have givin up..
I just wanted to let everyone know that the 2stone exceded my expectations on just my first try..
it's been what I've been looking for in making a great pizza..
high heat and perfect crust..at first when I opened the package I wasn't that sure but this baby is amazing..on my first pizza it turned out perfect..in 3 minutes the crust was perfectly full of air bubbles and charred crust from the Lehmann recipe that I have tried about 100 times in my oven to no avail..
I didn't have a temp but I bet you it was up to 700 or 800 degrees on my weber propane which only gets up to 450..
2 warning signs..
when you have the lid open of your gas weber don't grab the handle..I burned my hand something fearst..I just didn't think that the Weber handle would be so hot from the heat coming out of the 2stone..
second is to keep the wheel a spinnin..back part got slightly burnt on the bottom..like Willard said it takes some fine tuning but over all it's perfection..
I've made about 30 pizzas now on the 2stone but last week for the first time I made 5 at once where as I usually only make one..
I found it better to keep the weber lid as closed as possible( just enuff to be able to rotate the 2stone wheel ) and to also close the lid after each pizza to bring the heat back up..
Willard..I can't tell ya how happy I've been with my results..
perfect pizza every time with no burnt bottom and charred crust on top..just the way I like it..
I've tried 2 picture down sizing sites with no luck and wish I could post some pics here to show ya my results..
cheers
FVGHave tried my first Pizza's on the 2Stone - with great results. The first one had a crust not quite cooked enough on the bottom. I let the stone heat up a bit more and tried again with much better results.
Round 2 with the 2 Stone - This time I lined the sides of the grill with aluminum foil and tried 2 different flours - KA Bread and KA Sir Lancelot. Much better browning and charring with the Sir Lancelot and better overall chewiness to go along with the charring. Cooking time for both was around 3 minutes and I plan on purchasing an IR thermometer this week so I can check temps. My original reason for purchasing the @Stone was so I could make pizza during the hot summer months but this is quickly becoming what I will use year round.
CanadianbaconHi Willard
that was just reg. old plain flour. Not a lot of yeast was used either, but I guess the intense
heat from the stone really zapped it into life.
I was surprised the dough got that thick, as I had rolled it out quite thinly. Last night
I did my 2nd kitchen oven test, and took that same amount of dough but used it in 2 pizzas,
and those were much thinner ( and my wife really loved them ) - for the first time, there was that nice
"crrrrr-unch ! " when I cut into the pizza with my chef's knife. Wowie !
you can see a couple of images of that in the thread I posted in last night.
