OK, this started waiting for the igniter to arrive but, fact is, I hate baking this time of year. it is just that heating the oven also means heating the house and in this heat, who needs THAT? the other might, HWMO and i wanted Pizza for dinner. so, I had a plan. and it worked but needs a few tweeks. assemble your pie, then, I took my round cast iron griddle and the lid to my cast iron dutch oven, put each on an eye and set them ablaze! Pizza needs to cook HOT so, I pulled them both to 500 degrees, then put on the pizza, put the lid on it and I had a decent pie. except the bottom was a skotch overdone. so, there are two options, here. lower the temp on the bottom pan or, keep the temp high but interrupt the contact between the bottom of the crust and the pan.
The good/cool part, though, is that anything you want to make/bake can be done stovetop with cast iron. just look to your campfire recipes for cast iron and translate them to stove top. I know I have made all sorts of breads outdoors in cast iron, why not indoors when the need arises. Most of the time, if I were baking something stovetop, I would just use the dutch oven but pizza needs intense heat on the top and it also needs to be removed from the cook flat. these are both tough orders for the dutch oven. that's why i went to griddle and lid. worked beautifully. and, since you can heat the cast iron much hotter than you would ever want to heat your oven, you get a far better pizza in the end.
I think next time I need to reheat a pizza, I will use this method but I will have the bottom griddle much cooler. let the heat come from the top. reheating pizza usually leaves me with lukewarm toppings unless I let it cook so much that the crust is hard as a rock or worse, burnt.
I know we all would also be happy to do this operation on the grill and I know a grill baked pizza is fantastic! but, here i sit on a friday afternoon, thinking about lunch for just me. Not about to fire up the grill to make pizza for one. it would take far longer and then I have charcoal still burning that I don't need or won't use. so, stovetop baking is great when you just want something fast or in small quantity.
What can you bake stovetop rather than oven to keep from heating up the house?
The good/cool part, though, is that anything you want to make/bake can be done stovetop with cast iron. just look to your campfire recipes for cast iron and translate them to stove top. I know I have made all sorts of breads outdoors in cast iron, why not indoors when the need arises. Most of the time, if I were baking something stovetop, I would just use the dutch oven but pizza needs intense heat on the top and it also needs to be removed from the cook flat. these are both tough orders for the dutch oven. that's why i went to griddle and lid. worked beautifully. and, since you can heat the cast iron much hotter than you would ever want to heat your oven, you get a far better pizza in the end.
I think next time I need to reheat a pizza, I will use this method but I will have the bottom griddle much cooler. let the heat come from the top. reheating pizza usually leaves me with lukewarm toppings unless I let it cook so much that the crust is hard as a rock or worse, burnt.
I know we all would also be happy to do this operation on the grill and I know a grill baked pizza is fantastic! but, here i sit on a friday afternoon, thinking about lunch for just me. Not about to fire up the grill to make pizza for one. it would take far longer and then I have charcoal still burning that I don't need or won't use. so, stovetop baking is great when you just want something fast or in small quantity.
What can you bake stovetop rather than oven to keep from heating up the house?
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