100k BTU Propane Powered Kettle Pizza!

[minhster]

My buddy got me interested in making pizzas at home with a wood fire brick oven awhile ago. Naturally I wanted one and went online and realized how damn expensive they are and started to look for other cheaper alternatives. I found this site and have been larking on it for months now following all the LBE threads. A few months ago I picked up a weber gold 22.5 and a kettle pizza attachment but never got around to using it. Finally this Sunday when my fiance was still sleeping I went out to the garage and started hacking it up. Hours later I came up with this...

[minhster]

Converting the kettle was pretty straight forward... I gutted the legs, drilled out the welds for leg mounts, masked it up, used a stock pot top to trace the circle, and used a jig saw on slow w/ a metal cutting blade. The whole thing took about an hour taking my time.

[minhster]

The MasterBuilt turkey fryer only came with a 32k BTU burner which got the temps up to around 600 but I wasn't satisfied. I went out and bought a 100k BTU burner and 10 PSI regulator and got it to around 800.

[minhster]

I haven't had a chance to make anything on it yet. Planning on baking some pies in it tonight and seeing how it turns out with just the kettle pizza attachment, some ceramic briquettes on the bottom grates (to control the flame) and a FibraMent-D stone. I bought some fire bricks and another stone to make an enclosed area but want to try it without all the extra bulls and whistles and see how it comes out first.

[buceriasdon]

Nice start. Now the real work begins with trying to get the top to bake at the same time as the bottom. Look forward to your progress.
Don

[scott123]

Minhster, I guess too much time has passed and it's too late to send back the kettle pizza attachment, right? Grill conversions all pretty much suffer from top heat issues- the pizza will have a tendency to burn on the bottom before it browns on the top. The goal for a conversion should be to bring the ceiling closer to the pizza, not further away. Even if you remove the lid and rest a large pizza stone on the attachment, the attachment itself is a bit too tall for a good ceiling height in this kind of setup.

[minhster]

We fired it up last night and I think it turned out pretty well... oven-wise at least. I don't think the setup suffers from a hot stone as much as others because I have 2 layers of ceramic briquettes on the bottom so the stone isn't being heated directly by any fuel source, it's being heated by the hot air only. If I crank up the burner all the way (without the briquettes), I can get the air temps up to 800-900 in just a few minutes. With the briquettes in place, I can only get the temperature up to around 700. That being said though, it does waste a LOT of fuel! 100k BTU burner maxed out and only getting 700 degrees. When I turn off the gas, the air temps drops dramatically in minutes but remains steady at around 700 when left on.

The pizza that came out were ok, i blame it on the dough. We had made some dough a week ago when we made pizza at a friend's. We had some left overs and my fiance just froze them and that's what we had to work with yesterday. The dough tasted stall and didn't want to raise although it had the proper browning on both the top and the bottom. The first one (pictured below) could've been left in for a minute longer (we cooked it for about 4-5 mins). The second one came out better color wise, it was perfectly browned on both sides but had some burnt cornmeal stuck on it that was left from the first pizza. Both pizza had the cheese bubbling within a minute. Both pizza got devoured rather quickly so I only have the one picture.

I think with a proper dough it could've worked. Will have to try another attempt soon.

[buceriasdon]

I look forward to the next firing and pictures.
Don

[Rocky]

Minhster:
Very nice metal work.  The thought of firing a BBQ grille with a hi-temp propane burner hadn't occurred to me. After reading your later post, I have to say that the propane consumption could get to be an issue.  Good luck with your experimentation.

[SteelGator]

Nice work.  I picked up a Kettle Pizza insert via CraigsList, though I'm using mine with charcoal/wood as opposed to your pretty awesome propane hack. Definitely consider laying a grate on the top of the insert and putting thermal mass on top of it. I laid fire bricks across the grate above my pizza, and the results were pretty excellent.

[toddster63]

I had toyed with doing this—getting a KettlePizza insert and propane powering it, and even just using the KettlePizza with wood fires (talk about an affordable WFO!)...

But the pies I saw come out of it look like the pies on this thread—very nice pies, mind you, but pale in color, indicative of pizzas cooked around 500F-550F and no higher (and then so why not just cook them in your home oven?), and with that blond color which is the signature of a lack of top heat. I firmly believe that the insert hole of the KettlePizza is too big—good for launching pies right into the oven, but you lose too much heat out of this large opening (I also think it's thin stainless construction loses even more heat). And as Scott123 mentioned, it just makes the oven too high and you lose too much heat up to the dome; perhaps one could dome pies in this sort of setup in attempts to get some color to the top of the pie...?

Many like these paler blond American pies, and that's great, but I'm a char fan, and am glad I went with a traditional LBE Weber mod, where I can easily recreate New-Neo's and elite NY pies with much darker color and bits of burnt char at much higher temps...