Back in May, I made my first attempt at pizza on my 15 year old Kamado #9. I was pretty unhappy about not being able to get into the 700 degree range that the cooker is supposed to be capable of. I got lots of good advice, and like a blockhead, I'm still doing a lot of things differently than some of you suggested. Later in that post, I did try to follow the advice of opening the top vent completely, but that doesn't seem to let the temp go higher.
With the pizza cooking happy hour coming up Thursday, I had to try again.
I decided to use my Baking Steel in its usual position, which sits six inches or so below the main cooking level. I reasoned that since I was losing a lot of heat opening the lid on previous cooks, I wanted the steel fully heat saturated (and close to the burning lump) and radiating heat like crazy. I then used the spacer and second level grill, with the Lodge cast iron pizza pan resting on that. I let the fire get started really well before putting the steel, grills and pizza pan in place. I then set to the inch and a half open at bottom and ten turns of the top vent open that the manual claims gets highest temperature. I left it a good half hour to saturate the steel and cast iron. Again, just as before, the temperature in the dome thermometer maxed at around 580. The IR gun read 550 on the pan as I put the pie in.
Here's a reminder of the cooker, and in the photo you can see that when the top vent is open ten revolutions, there is enough of an air gap that it seems air is not restricted at all in flowing out the top.
The good news is that by letting the steel and cast iron get well saturated with heat, the temperature recovered back above 550 within a minute of putting the pie on to cook. I peeked at about 5 minutes, and with the quick open of the lid, the temp reading barely took a brief dip. Here's the pie on the cooking setup at around 6 and a half or 7 minutes:
Close up of the pie:
And it was great, with good spotting on the underside:
I'd be much happier if I could crank the heat higher, but this is definitely acceptable. I'll keep fiddling, maybe playing with the vent settings a little after the heat saturation has gotten pretty far along.
With the pizza cooking happy hour coming up Thursday, I had to try again.
I decided to use my Baking Steel in its usual position, which sits six inches or so below the main cooking level. I reasoned that since I was losing a lot of heat opening the lid on previous cooks, I wanted the steel fully heat saturated (and close to the burning lump) and radiating heat like crazy. I then used the spacer and second level grill, with the Lodge cast iron pizza pan resting on that. I let the fire get started really well before putting the steel, grills and pizza pan in place. I then set to the inch and a half open at bottom and ten turns of the top vent open that the manual claims gets highest temperature. I left it a good half hour to saturate the steel and cast iron. Again, just as before, the temperature in the dome thermometer maxed at around 580. The IR gun read 550 on the pan as I put the pie in.
Here's a reminder of the cooker, and in the photo you can see that when the top vent is open ten revolutions, there is enough of an air gap that it seems air is not restricted at all in flowing out the top.
The good news is that by letting the steel and cast iron get well saturated with heat, the temperature recovered back above 550 within a minute of putting the pie on to cook. I peeked at about 5 minutes, and with the quick open of the lid, the temp reading barely took a brief dip. Here's the pie on the cooking setup at around 6 and a half or 7 minutes:
Close up of the pie:
And it was great, with good spotting on the underside:
I'd be much happier if I could crank the heat higher, but this is definitely acceptable. I'll keep fiddling, maybe playing with the vent settings a little after the heat saturation has gotten pretty far along.
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