Kamado Joe - In search of the perfect Pizza - Attempt #3

With each cook I seem to get closer and closer to pizza perfection. On my third attempt I have found the perfect dough recipe and with a few tweaks to my cooking method I think I will be able to achieve the crust I'm looking for when I attempt cook #4

Tip: When learning a new technique it is good to focus on one or two new things instead of trying a bunch of things. For example on cooks 1 and 2, I made both the dough and the sauce from scratch (new recipes), this is all well and good but it was hard for me to decipher what I liked and didn't like and why. So on this cook I made the dough from scratch but used a store bought sauce that I know I like. Once I nail the crust I will begin the pursuit for the perfect sauce(s)

Tip: Pizza cooks takes some time, so watch out for charcoal that burns hot and fast. The CowBoy brand heats up hot fast, but it also  burns up fast.. meaning that while I heated up my pizza stone for the required 45minutes to an hour, I was quickly loosing charcoal at the rate that I would need to add more in order to keep my temps up through the entire cook

Mistake: I still did not get my pizza high enough into the dome to achieve the perfect cook. In order to do so I think I will need the grill expander, so I bought one and hope to have it in hand shortly to give it a try. Not having my pizza close to dome did not get me as much all around heat thus the toppings although cooked where not as well done as the crust

Sauce & Crust

(1) Brown Eyed Baker "Thin Crust"
(2) Classico Pizza Sauce 

Heat Source & Tools

(1) Cowboy Brand Charcoal 
(2) Kamado Joe Pizza Stone
(3) Kamado Joe Heat Deflector
(4) Infrared Temperature Gun

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

Kamado Joe - In search of the Perfect Pizza - Attempt #1

What a disaster, one of my main reasons for picking up a Kamado is my love of pizza, but so far I can tell this is going to be a challenge…

Pizza attempt #1 was kinda of rushed and not as home made as I would have liked. As you can see from the above image, the crust really puffed up on me and did not darken up as mush as I would have liked.. who wants a pasty white crust?

Learning's:

Don't buy store bought pizza crust, yes some stores sell fresh pizza dough, but how fresh, how well proofed and what they are made of will still be a mystery. I had a hard time stretching my dough, and it could have been because it was fairly cold, or it could have been over worked.

Do to my over working and the length of time I needed to stretch the pizza I used more flour then I would have hopped, and thus effecting the overall cook.

As for toppings I used fresh mozzarella (in water) I think this was a mistake as it released some water during the cook, wetting down the sauce. I also used a basic tomato puree with some fresh garlic. The sauce really could have used a boost as it imparted little to no taste

As mentioned above I kinda rushed into this cook, and although I heated the BBQ to 550 degrees, I did not leave the pizza stone on the grill long enough to properly heat up.. thus the crust cooked much slower then expected and I did not get that nice crunch and pull that I was looking for. It was almost bread like in texture.

Heat Source & Tools

(1) Kamado Joe (red bag) Charcoal 
(2) Kamado Joe Pizza Stone
(3) Kamado Joe Heat Deflector



Pizza attempt #2 will be posted soon, the results were better, but still not great