Big Green Egg query

[Bada Bing]

Sorry, folks.  But I could not figure out how to find what I suppose has to exist: some extended discussion of using the BGE as a pizza oven.  A dealer just came to town, and I'll spring for a BGE if it comes real close to wood-fired-oven performance.  I like to make Neapolitan-style/NY neo-neapolitan style pies.  Would like to be cooking at 800+ and with 00 flour, etc.

I was assuming that the BGE would not work, because too much heat would escape upon opening the lid to put in the pizza.  But the dealer, who is not a pizza specialist, insists that the heat retention in the ceramic dome make the BGE much faster at recovering oven temps than when one is using thin metal grills.  Is this an issue that the forums have soundly discussed and tested?

Thanks in advance!

[Jet_deck]

If you will search the site for "plate setter"  you should get some good hits on BGE and Kamado pizza cooking...

[Bigfoot21075]

I have had my egg for over 10 years now (large). I have made some good pizzas on it, it will certianly get hot enough and the top will retain enough heat to easily cook the top of the pie. You have to use the plate setter and get the Big Green Egg Pizza Stone. The cheap-o stones will not last on the intense heat the egg can produce.

The upside is I did make some very good pizza. The downside of the egg is that the gasket had to be replaced after a few pizzas (the high heat killed them - even though BGE HQ sent them to me for free, it was still a pain). I have heard they now have a new high heat gasket (the high heat one is white in color, the old type was black or dark grey) that comes on the newer eggs so that issue may be null. The only other challenge was the awkwardness of loading and unloading the pies. Do yourself a favor and get the banjo peel from the begining, it helps a lot.

All that said, I recently went to a pizza oven (roundboy pizza oven) for pizza and now use my egg for lower temp stuff. The actual pizza oven made things a lot easier, but the egg showed me that I really like real pizza. The other thing is if you get the egg and hate it you can easily sell it for darn near what you have in it.

[Alligator]

The big green egg certainly can make great pizza.  I wouldn't say it has the same performance as a wood fired oven but it does a good job of faking it.

Here is my most recent cook. (only the second time I have cooked pizza on it though)
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,19496.0.html