1st pizza attempt camp chef

[marshall]

I tried 2 pizzas today for the first time in my new italia camp chef pizza oven. I used King Arthur 00 flour and followed their recipe for Neapolitan crust, then just made simple margarita pizzas to start with. The oven worked very well hitting temps of 750 degrees on the stone. The dome thermometer seemed to be very close to the stone temp after it pre heated for 20 min.
It is a learning curve as with anything. I had it cranked to the max and I am thinking I need to turn the temp down to around 600 ??? As the bottom burned before the top was browned up. Is my thinking correct? I’m looking forward to trying again very soon, any insight or tips would be appreciated,

[Richard Chrz]

Not familiar with your cooker at all, is there room underneath to put a water pan as a heat sink?

[marshall]

Not sure, I might be able to get something small underneath if I remove the stone…

[captainlee]

You have to get your top heat balanced. Maybe lower temp, pre heat longer to develop better top heat. It's a learning curve with your dough recipe and fixings. Keep at it !!!

[captainlee]

Thinking about my pizza oven learning experience. I would start at 500 degrees and work your way up a little at a time. You may find that with your dough and oven you may hit a maximum temperature well below the 700 mark. I'm still learning on my Yoder insert oven. I'm up to 525 set point and turning out great pizza. I honestly don't care if i can cook a pizza in seconds, just want good pies. I will continue to creep the temps up just to see and learn out of curiosity.

[marshall]

Good tip , thank you!

[captainlee]

Also get an IR hand held temperature gun, Amazon has many. Great to check temps, especially your deck.

[jfmorris]

marshall your experience with the bottom burning before the top was done mirrors what happened with me the one time I took my SNS Kamado up to 750F to do pizzas. You have to have the right crust recipe and pizza toppings need to be sparse like on a Neapolitan style I think, for those high temps to work. For my crust recipe and more "standard" pizza toppings, I've found I need to keep my kamado down around 600F to get the results I want without the crust burning before the top is done.

EDIT: I realize you *did* do a Neapolitan style pizza, but maybe it just wasn't the best crust recipe or something. And as others said, maybe the top stone needs longer than 20 to preheat. I let my kamado spend 45 to 60 minutes getting to 750F though, and know in my case the ceramic was HOT, and still didn't have good results at that high a temp.

[jfmorris]

Thunder77 I always use parchment paper to get the pizza onto the grill. At 700+, the parchment paper almost instantly bursts into flames and burns under the pizza, before you get a chance for the crust to set enough to pull it out. At 600F and below, you can pull the parchment paper out after about a minute, at the first turn of the pizza.

[Thunder77]

jfmorris, you are correct. I think parchment paper is limited to 600 degrees. I usually am doing NY style pizza, which I do around 500-550.

[jfmorris]

Thunder77 my crust recipe is also NY style, and it does great in that 500-600 range, so I've learned to keep things there after the burned crust and flaming parchment paper episode!

We build the pizzas on parchment paper, then I use a large rimless pan to scoop them up like a giant pizza peel, and slide them onto the grill from that. I see the pics of launching pizzas from a wooden peel, and think about getting the stuff to do that, but what I have is working fine...

[Attjack]

What was in the dough recipe? If you had oil or sugar you should probably eliminate those ingredients because they can burn.

[marshall]

There was 1/2 tsp sugar in a 2 cup recipe. Thank you for the insight!!

[Attjack]

I've been using Ken Forkish dough recipes for a long time now. I tried to go to his restaurant Sunday but the line was 3 blocks long so I had to settle for BBQ and beers.

[marshall]

Looks dang delicious man!