A question for all you kamado pizza bakers. Do you leave your heat deflector in when you bake pizza, or do pull it out and put the stone high up in the dome? I'm about to try my first kamado pizza bake, and I want to get it right.
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I don't have a Kamado but I want to see pictures of the results! Good luck. -
I keep the deflector in, because it seems harder to keep the stone a bit cooler than the dome than the other way around.
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Don't have an official kamado but do have a WSCGC and on my first attempt at pizza left the diffuser in. Seemed to work really well.Comment
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One day I will have a kamado for a pizza oven. One day [sigh..]Comment
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Done it both ways and really depends on time. If you are rushed for time and dont have the luxury of letting everything get good and heat soaked then deflector out and pay close attention to temp and fire / flame height. If you do have luxury of time keep deflector in and get everything good and warm. Minimum 45 minutes but preferably 60+. The up side to deflector in is not worrying so much about how close the deflector is to the flame. I dont find a difference in stone height with deflector in place.Comment
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I always have left the heat deflector in my BGE when baking pizza. Works very well. I try to get the pizza stone to around 450 before starting the bake. Usually take 5-8 minutes for a golden crust with regular dough. I will be trying 00 flour one of these days.Comment
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I've only done 2 pizzas in my KJ. First was good, second was excellent. I had 2 frozen pizza dough balls from Sam's Club. Plan was 2 and done. Wife liked the second one so much that she's trying to find the dough balls in a lesser quantity than the 14 that Sam's Club has in a package. Or, we might be making our own pizza dough from scratch. But, that second pizza turned her (and me) into believers that we could make excellent pizza at home.
Technique the same both times.
Divide &Conquer rack in place. Only thing mounted was the X rack, and it was on the top mount.
Deflectors on top of the X rack.
Five 1/2" copper plumbing "T"s on top of the deflectors. (Spacing between deflector and pizza stone)
Pizza stone on top of the deflectors. I read a lot that suggested that having no deflector would often result in a cracked pizza stone. The little copper fittings just kept the stone from being right on the deflector.
Stone was at 565 and stock thermometer was at 700 when I put the pizza on.
Cooked 9 minutes. Everything was cooked nicely. Crispy, browned crust on the bottom. Heavily loaded with pepperoni, mushrooms, pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese.
Had the top vent swung all the way open (bottom open all the way too) to generate lots of air flow and therefore heat, and I could watch the top of the pizza cook.
Good enough that I won't mess with this technique at all. This is the way I'll always do them.
Best regards,
Jim
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I put my heat deflectors under the pizza stone - both ontop of the second rack - in order to get it higher in the dome.Comment
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Heat deflectors in for sure. You don't want direct heat on the stone. You'll burn the bottom side.
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The main reason that the second pizza was better than the first was that on the first one I only had the stone up to about 450F, and the dome thermometer at about 550F. They both had the crunchy bottom, but the second one had that nicely chewy crust.
Temperature is definitely important to getting a really good pizza.
Jim
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