Aimless New York

[AimlessRyan]

Pic 1: Since I couldn't taste the sauce yesterday, and because I didn't take a picture of the sauced skin, I made sure to get a pic today. This much sauce worked very well.

Pic 2: Five-minute bake. (See story in previous post.)

Pic 3: Undercrust shortly after baking.

[AimlessRyan]

Even considering the obstacles I had to overcome, this pizza turned out very good; perhaps one of the best I've made, although it was a little underdone on the top. Actually, being underdone is probably the best thing that could have happened because it made me realize how overdone most of my recent NY style pizzas have been. This one was nice and chewy, but not too chewy.

8 oz of cheese seems to have been just about right on this pizza, which was about 15.5".

Pic 1: I'd call this good color.
Pic 2: Not really a crumb shot, but slybarman's tip seems to have helped immensely.
Pic 3: I guess this is a crumb shot. Better quality pic than my previous ones?
Pic 4: Another undercrust shot.

[slybarman]

macro mode!  .

If you could get a little more top heat going in the grill, you would probably have a perfect pie. Looks like you are getting good spring from your dough - the rim is nice and airy.

[Chicago Bob]

Paydirt....sauce an cheese levels look soo nice. Next full on oven bake should make you proud. Hell, this one's better than most all out there as it is...nice work man!

[AimlessRyan]

A few pics from the pizzas I made less than an hour ago.

[Jet_deck]

Ryan, I want this slice.  Looks good,

[AimlessRyan]

Ryan, I want this slice.  Looks good,

Oh, you would have loved the first slice I had, then. It was black. It may have been that spot, but I really wasn't paying attention. I just didn't want the guest to get stuck with the blackened slice.

[Ev]

Looks great! .......and almost perfectly round too!   

[scott123]

Ryan, I think that's one of the best pies I've ever seen that has come out of a single stone scenario in a grill.  I'm reasonably certain that you've squeezed as much as humanly possible out of that setup.

I believe you're more than ready to start experimenting with some sort of top stone. A top stone in the grill will yield a far better return on your investment than working with a 500 degree oven, which, unless you're willing to mod it, will never produce this last pie. Even if you are willing to mod your home oven, I think that a second stone in a grill has a much better track record than oven mods- unless you're talking about major re-wiring/turbo switches, which I think very few people are willing to do.

[slybarman]

To that end, that fellow Michael seems to be getting very nice results with a heavy duty baking sheet as his top stone. I imagine that approach would be pretty cost effective. I may give it a go myself as well as playing with my oven's broiler.

[AimlessRyan]

Thanks guys.

The three most recent pics are from two different pizzas, which were baked consecutively. Pic 1 is from the first pizza, and the other two pics are from the second pizza. The first pizza's bake time was 5 minutes, and the second was a little over 5 minutes.

I gave the grill and stone sufficient time to heat up with these pizza, and I didn't have any problems landing them on the stone (for once), which made everything work out infinitely better. I probably would have been better off pulling the first pizza after 4 minutes and change, but it's pretty hard to figure that out without opening the grill lid during the bake and letting all the heat out (which I didn't do).

Even with the higher bake time, I liked the second pizza better. It had a crispness that I almost never get with either the oven or the grill. It may have been my best NY style crust ever.

Scott, I'd really, really love to try a top stone with the grill and/or mods with the oven, but I probably won't be able to because: 1) I'm poor, and 2) This is Mom and Dad's equipment, not mine. (They use the grill a lot, which means I need to keep my setup easy to dismantle and relocate.)

Thanks for the feedback. Maybe it'll switch me into a different mindset and force me to find a good way to deliver some top heat to my grilled pizzas, which I think everyone can see is desperately needed.

[scott123]

Ryan, a 2 stone setup need not be complicated or expensive.  A second baking stone would be ideal, but you can achieve something similar with firebricks, quarry tiles, or even regular tiles (glaze side facing away from hearth).  Regular tiles on a cookie sheet, suspending by either four $1 kiln posts or $10 worth of aluminum flashing would probably do the trick, although if you could hang the tiles (preferable dark clay) with angle iron and remove the cookie sheet, that would probably be ideal.  Firebrick's biggest downside is that it's a lot thermal mass, thermal mass that sucks up a lot of heat.

The most important aspect is that, whatever you build for a ceiling has to be quite a bit larger than the hearth so the heat can come up past the hearth and collect on the ceiling.