Kamado Joe - In search of the perfect Pizza - Attempt #2

After my disastrous first attempt at pizza on the Kamado, I stepped back, looked at my mistakes and then started fresh… key word "Fresh" meaning I made both the dough and the sauce from scratch. Both of the recipes I used can be found below. I will state now that I was not super happy with the crust, but this quick and easy sauce had some good flavour, though it tastes much like the canned sauce I can get at most local grocers.

All in all this cook was better then cook 1, but still much room for improvement.. here are my findings:

Mistake #1 on this cook was not resting the dough over night, I allow it to sit for a good few hours, but I should have made it early and left it overnight like almost all recipes call for. This may have been the reason it was harder to stretch and did not bake up as nicely as I had hopped.

Mistake #2: once the BBQ got up to 500 degrees I dropped in the heat deflector at the lower level and place the pizza stone on the main grill.. almost immediately I noticed my temp stopped climbing and we I had a really hard time getting it up over 550 degrees.

Mistake #3: I allowed the pizza stone to climb up to 544 degrees but since the BBQ was not much hotter I decided to just toss on my pizza. This made for a much slower cook then I had hoped for, and the crust was left this nasty white colour and not the golden brown I was looking for.


Tip #1: As mentioned above I left the pizza stone on the top rack, which was nowhere near close enough to the top of the kamado to get that quick cook on the cheese and toppings. This really was a slow bake not at all what I was looking for in a finished product. Buying an extender rack will help with this issue and get your pizza up nice and high

Tip #2: when trying to learn a new cooking technique, your best to keep it pretty simple. This is why I have been making margherita pizza, which is simply dough, sauce, cheese and basil. Once I have this nailed I will start to experiment further.

Sauce & Dough

(1) Easy Pizza Sauce 1 (allrecipes.com)
(2) Classic NewYork Style Pizza Dough

Heat Source & Tools

(1) Natures Own by Basques Charcoal 
(2) Kamado Joe Pizza Stone
(3) Kamado Joe Heat Deflector
(4) Infrared Temperature Gun