Portable (sorta), Storable, Wood Fired Pizza Oven!

[jclay]

Pretty clever: Brick Pizza Oven Video & Plans GF TV - GardenFork.TV

Tinkering Lab: Portable Pizza Oven

[Too Tall]

Not bad at all :)

[Guillaume]

Oh dear! Another thing to try.

Might add a door and bake bread in it.

[Dallas Tex]

That’s too cool. Ultra simplified.

[rwsaunders]

As he wasn't using refractory brick, you just have to be careful that the intense heat doesn't cause any moisture that might be trapped in the brick to expand, which subsequently might cause the brick to crack, taking the whole oven to the ground.

[jclay]

I’ve been imagining all sorts of ways to build a pizza oven but I really don't want to do the construction, ‘cause I’m burned out with building stuff (even frames for the time being). So how to snap my fingers and have a pizza oven without throwing dollars at an extravagance. We quit grilling meats’n stuff ages ago and got rid of all that stuff...except for one of those mini Weber kettles. My old, carbon encrusted Super Stone surprised me by fitting onto the grate with maybe a half or three quarters of an inch annular gap all around; not much but not nothing either. The lid fit the OD of the kettle, not the ID so, maybe it would breath adequately? With the rim of the grate taking up a little bit of otherwise available annular space for airflow, I thought that elevating the SS with some inch thick pieces of flat terracotta might help combustion airflow, so I did.

With two cups of flour I had a small batch of dough rising as I debrided the SS; that was actually quite a chore. I loaded and lit the Mini Webber with a pretty good bit of charcoal, let it get ashen/burn off the petrochem load, stuck the SS on, covered and gave it a half hour to preheat. First try was with 1/ 2 of the dough ball to make a small, maybe 10” OD pizza; only sauce, moz, onions since this was about testing the grill as pizza oven, not making a great tasting pizza. Kinda thick crust but damned if the bottom wasn’t cooked to a nice, crusty brown with no burning or blisters; and the pizza was cooked too! About 8, 9 min. Divided the remaining half into two, rolled same OD but much thinner, repeated otherwise. Really nice crust! Crispy, cooked throughout, a nice brown on the bottom, no burning, and everything else was fine too. The second one was good too but the crust not quite as pleasing; turns out I’d run out of coals! EZ fix for that going forward.

The taste was only OK, decent, but nothing to write home about; I just used Rao’s spaghetti sauce (quick, available and pretty good), PollyO Moz (whole milk, plain vanilla moz), some chopped onion, salt, oregano. Lotta room for improvement with the flavor but damned if the little grill didn't do pretty well. It’s not a smok’en hot, wood fired, 90 second pizza oven but the crust was cooked really nicely. And, truth be told I have to wonder about the quest for the, you know, 33 second, faster/hotter is better pizza; there have to be limits and that kinda reminds me of the “get a flame thrower for brazing” thing that gets espoused here, there, in the framebuilding world. It works for some, and some approaches, but one can go over board with the more/bigger is better thing, ya know? Bottom line: The little ‘effer did well.

So, I don’t have to spend weeks digging up a bunch of clay or scavenge bricks or whatever to make an outdoor, mud or brick or whatever pizza oven. I don’t have to get more stuff. The Mini Webber will cook a small pizza pretty darn well; well enough for me. A larger Webber is probably more capable but maybe, like an AW206, the Mini Webber’s heating limitations helped keep me out of trouble...and we have one; no. more. stuff. The flavor shortcomings are the cook’s problem, not the grill’s….so that’s good news! What a successful day it has been!

Two pics starting here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/216244.../in/datetaken/

[jclay]

The morning after leftovers taste better.

On the next iteration I'll remove the three terracotta risers and put the SS directly on the grate. On second look-see I think they may have reduced airflow from bottom to top of the grill.

I'll also load significantly more total fuel mass while substituting wood for about half of the charcoal.

[kvnrvn]

I’d just get an Ooni oven or something similar. Something like that is going to take a couple of hours to heat up and it gets really difficult to get all the ash cleaned up and not getting it on the pizza. The portable pellet ovens are amazing. 15 minutes to heat up and makes amazing Neapolitan pizzas with just a little practice.