"2 brick" grill test

[pcampbell]

I mentioned we are out of a kitchen for a few weeks and I haven't had a chance to get the brick oven together yet, so I made a sort of 4 sided rectangle box (open front/rear) on the grill.  I preheated for maybe 3 hours.  The deck temp was about 600 F and the bottom of the top bricks was maybe 50 degrees cooler  by infrared gun.   This is definitely not how it should be! But still produced some of my best pizzas:

[pcampbell]

The #3, 5 and 6 pictures go together.  As you cansee the bottom is burnt and the top is just about done to perfection.  Whereas in the other pictures, the bottom is just about done to perfection, and the top is not done properly.  The deck height is the height of 1 fire brick on its tall side, minus the height of 1 fire brick on it's short side.  Should be approx. 4.5-2 to 2.5 (?).  I think as Willard mentioned, perhaps the answer to this problem could be a skinnier top deck.  I think the black spot in #1 is just a thin spot.

[MTPIZZA]

Nice going I always thought a stone above and below in a grill would work... support the upper pizza stone with the fire brick on each side-- like you have in your pictures. I think you wouldn't have to wait so long for heat up cause the two pizza stones would be less dense then a roof of fire brick... great experiment though! thanks

[pcampbell]

I was surprised how well it worked.  I think that the super low deck height was important.   I was thinking about the 18x24" fibrament stone on top, would work nicely but I want to make sure it also fits in my regular oven.  I will probably try the half thickness firebricks first if I get a chance.

[pcampbell]

Happy 4th of July...

I made some dough that should be very decent for today.  I paid quite a bit of attention to detail on 4 smaller 12" King Arthur 60% pies made with mill ground sea salt and spring water, dry mixing the salt and yeast into the flour for uniformity (not sure if it matters), then giving a 1 hour autolyse, 7 minutes on the S hook, followed by a 48 hour cold ferment. 

It would be really fun to make these on the grill since we'll all be hopefully relaxing outside this afternoon.  The 10 fire bricks on the grill was just too much.  I took forever to heat up and drained my propane tank. I am trying to figure out what I could do with resources on hand today to try to lessen the heat up time and try to get the top hotter than the bottom (as opposed to less hot).  What comes to mind is using my fire brick splits for the floor and using quarry tiles for the ceiling...

[Fingerstyle]

I"ll bet splits and tiles cut preheat time in half.

Awhile back (pre-LBE) I had good results with firebrick splits on bottom and a pizza stone (rectangular) about 2" above. I think the key(s) are to leave at least 0.5" around the splits side and back for heat/exit gases to circulate up, around and over the pie, and lots of HD foil to create an enclosure that forces vent gas under and over the top stone to exit in the front only. I propped the grill door about 6" up so I could rotate the pie with spatulas, but with the foil mini-oven ducting the actual vent opening was about 4" x 14". Might foil cover the grill handle if plastic, get's pretty hot this way.

Happy Independence day!

Vic

Happy 4th of July...

I made some dough that should be very decent for today.  I put paid quite a bit of attention to detail on 4 smaller 12" King Arthur 60% pies made with mill ground sea salt and spring water, dry mixing the salt and yeast into the flour for uniformity (not sure if it matters), then giving a 1 hour autolyse, 7 minutes on the S hook, followed by a 48 hour cold ferment. 

It would be really fun to make these on the grill since we'll all be hopefully relaxing outside this afternoon.  The 10 fire bricks on the grill was just too much.  I took forever to heat up and drained my propane tank. I am trying to figure out what I could do with resources on hand today to try to lessen the heat up time and try to get the top hotter than the bottom (as opposed to less hot).  What comes to mind is using my fire brick splits for the floor and using quarry tiles for the ceiling...

[pcampbell]

This worked so much better, and the pizzas were really quite good.  The bottom was almost perfect, a little over done because we are still fighting with a hotter bottom vs top temperatures... delaying to try to get the top done.  We used organic tomatoes pureed with some sea salt and organic garlic.  For cheese a blend between Natures promise whole milk organic and Cabot part skim.  Really came out very nice, but this is still not what I am after.  I told my wife if I could get the top heat corrected I would be really happy.  The deck went up to about 650F, and makes for a nice 3-4 minute 12" pizza but the top tiles are just not hot enough.

I am really considering making my own deck oven out of steel, "FB" board for insulation from Forno Bravo, and fire brick splits which are 1.25" thick.  From what I have read this FB Board will bring 800-900 degrees down to 160-170F.  I have been trying to get the dome oven going in the backyard and have gotten as far as the platform but my welding skills are a lot better than my masonry skills.  Not that either are good, but I am less intimidated by welding    I think that I could quite easily make a brick lined deck oven, big enough for one large 18" pie, low deck height (thinking 6").  With the grill, you have to have such a small deck height that getting the pizza off of the peel is annoying.  What I have not figured out yet is where to put the burner.  I am thinking the burner should go inside of the bake chamber, but I am not sure.  I would love to use natural gas.  The wonderful thing about natural gas is 1/5 or so the cost of fuel (cost me only $1.45 for 100,000 BTU) and of course never worrying about running out.   This would of course be an OUTSIDE only oven.