New coal experiment

[blksabbath]

After my trip to Italy and studying the ovens I came across, I was thinking how to improve my setup.  One oven in particular sticks in my mind.


There is no insulation, the floor is fire brick, the fire just sits on the bricks at the back.  One drawback of the kettlepizza and many other set ups is that the heat is too low even with all the fuel banked in the back or in the vicious V (PAC man).  So for shits and grins I stacked two full baskets and put a few chunks on top.  The fire was significantly higher up and almost at the same level as the baking steel floor.  I didn't use an upper deck heat deflector (baking steel) this time.

The results were very promising.  The bottoms and tops of the pies finished perfectly freckled in about 6 minutes with one spin.  No it wasn't the 2-3 minutes of the one in Italy, but much closer and a whole lot simpler to set up.  It used less fuel as well for just two pizzas.  I don't have the kettlepizza tombstone...is the box like I'm describing?





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bob BQ]

Very nice, @blksabbath.  I might have to get (or make) the KP extension for a 26" grill. I'm thinking I could get the fire on the same level as the pizza stone/steel and still have room for the pie on the bigger grill.

[blksabbath]

That extension would be a piece of cake to make.  You could probably make a ghetto fantastic version from a stainless baking sheet, tin snips, and a few wing nuts or rivits.  I'm going to make a deeper, wider basket so I don' t have to stack them.  Or add a fire brick or two under the basket to raise it even further.

[theduke]

The results were very promising.  The bottoms and tops of the pies finished perfectly freckled in about 6 minutes with one spin.  No it wasn't the 2-3 minutes of the one in Italy, but much closer and a whole lot simpler to set up.  It used less fuel as well for just two pizzas.  I don't have the kettlepizza tombstone...is the box like I'm describing?

I have the tombstone and the issue I ran into with the basket at the back was when I would slide a wood split across the stone into it, the basket would fall down as it's not really attached. More of an interference fit that can't support the weight of a few small wood splits. I was using the pacman setup underneath at the time.
I've since gone back to the slownsear and it's nearly perfect for that. One overflowing chimney of Competition sits up almost even with the tombstone and the splits sit on top accomplishing pretty much what you're describing. Works really well!

[cwmfour]

@blksabbath can you post a pic of your fire setup? I have the KP setup with tombstone and steel topper.  Not pleased with my cooks yet as I feel the fire is too low in the kettle. I make the fire huge and then the stone is too hot for the cook. Or it could be the cornmeal burning. I've got to switch to semolina or parchment as others have discussed.