Weber Kettle & Pizza?

[brent]

I have been thinking about using my weber kettle to get that char & smoke taste to the crust. How many of you have tried this? How well does it actually work? I hear some people say that their crust ends up getting burned before their pizza is done and others say it works good. How hot does your weber kettle usually get? Is this worth a try or should i just stick with my oven? Also i have a weber gas grill (gensis b) which gets to about 650-700 easily. I was thinking if the weber kettle wasn't possible maybe i could use the gaser.

Since i have never seen wood/coal fired oven and only seen them on life food network and the such. It seems like the heat in these ovens comes from the top rather than the bottom. Is this why they are able to get the pizzas perfect and it doesn't burn the crust. Any help would be appreciated.

thanks,
Brent

[pftaylor]

brent,
Welcome to our special community.

Your interest in grilling pizza is aligned with my experience. I have been successful with a TEC infra-red gas grill which may be quite different from your Webber. I have posted hundreds of photographs showing my results and dozens of my posts detail my thinking on how to grill pizzas effectively. Kindly search my name and you will find years worth of effort in mere minutes.

Good luck and report back on your progress.

[neilb]

It's funny that you ask about the Weber Kettle as I just finished cooking a pizza on mine no more than 2 hours ago.  I didn't have very good luck in keeping the temp up high enough though.  I loaded the grill with charcoal and at one point had the temp up in the 550f range, but once the lid was closed it quickly dropped.  I was using pizza stone made for use on outdoor grills.  I had read that when using a stone on the grill that it was best to setup the coals for indirect heat (to either side of the stone) otherwise the top of the pizza wouldn't cook at the same rate as the bottom.  Once I shut the grill trying to heat the stone the temp went from 550 to 450 within a matter of minutes.  By the time the pizza was done it was down around 425.  I found myself thinking that if I put a few more vents in the grill maybe I could keep enough airflow in the kettle to keep the temp up.  Overall the pizza wasn't a bust, but I could have obtained 500 degrees in the kitchen.  I'll post back if I decide to mod the grill with my results