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Second Attempt Cooking Pizza On My Kamado #9

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    Second Attempt Cooking Pizza On My Kamado #9

    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.

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    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:

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    Close up of the pie:

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    And it was great, with good spotting on the underside:

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    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.

    #2
    Good job. I just burned the crap outta the bottom of mine tonight.

    Comment


    • Jim White
      Jim White commented
      Editing a comment
      Oh, I feel your pain. Have been there.

    #3
    Looks great! I'd be happy to eat that pizza.

    Comment


      #4
      Great lookin' pizza.

      Comment


        #5
        looks perfect to me!

        Comment


          #6
          That pizza looks great but I guess any excuse will do to have another go😊

          Comment


            #7
            PIZZA! Looks great!

            Comment


              #8
              Jim White that pizza looks great to me! Glad to see you using that Lodge pizza pan - I need to make pizza again soon myself, except the wife is on a new no bread kick...

              It is still surprising to me that you cannot get that kamado any hotter than I get my Weber Performer - of course, I have to crack the lid open to get 550F in the dome, indirect. I've always heard for so many years how kamados can be such high heat cookers, and you have the cadillac of kamados there.

              What kind of charcoal are you using, and how much? Could that be a factor?

              Jim

              Comment


              • Jim White
                Jim White commented
                Editing a comment
                I'm using Cowboy lump and really put in a lot on that cook. I'm leaning toward putting in a couple of oak splits along with the lump next time. I may also get things even more into roaring fire before closing things up.

              • jfmorris
                jfmorris commented
                Editing a comment
                Jim White when I did pizza on the kettle, I added several sizable hunks of wood on top of the charcoal in the SNS, and had flames from the wood licking the top of the kettle. Maybe some wood would help, assuming your air flow lets it burn with flames and not just smolder.

              • gilbertpilz
                gilbertpilz commented
                Editing a comment
                If you are looking for higher temperatures, you might want to try denser charcoal. From the reading I've done (not direct personal experience) charcoal made from quebracho blanco burns hotter than charcoal made from other woods (oak, mesquite, etc.). The most popular brand made from this wood seems to be Jealous Devil. I've seen it at Ace sometimes and you can order it on the net. It's generally expensive as hell, but you could order a small box just to experiment.
                Last edited by gilbertpilz; September 5, 2020, 08:10 AM.

              #9
              Great looking pizza.

              Comment


                #10
                Great looking pizza! For a simple food, it's such a fickle thing to master. Like jfmorris I use my Performer for pizza, and after several years I'm still tweaking things here and there, never perfection.

                I'm really looking forward to the pizza happy hour this week too. I will be taking copious notes I'm sure.

                Comment


                  #11
                  I tried to cook pizza once in my old Akron Kamado, it was cold outside and I could not get it above 500F and I was expecting it go much higher.

                  Comment


                  • Jim White
                    Jim White commented
                    Editing a comment
                    It's nice to know I'm not alone on this.

                  #12
                  Looks damn good to me!

                  Comment


                    #13
                    A couple of days ago I did pizza with the Kettle Pizza oven attachment on my Weber Kettle. A full chimney of charcoal and 3 split mesquite logs got the pizza stone to 550 and the oven heat to 700 degF. Pizza cooked in 2 mins with a half rotation of the pizza at the one minute mark to even up the charing on the crust. Unfortunately no pictures this time.

                    Comment


                      #14
                      Fine Job,Brother!

                      Really tasty lookin pie!

                      Comment

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