Internal cooking Setup in a Pizza-Porta

I have spent a lot of time fussing with kamado style grills.  From the Akorn to the Kamado Joe, Big Green Egg, to the Grill Dome, I worry about the details of how each performs.  When making a product that many of you will use in a variety of cooking conditions it is important that everything has been tested and works.  I have also spent time with wood-fired pizza ovens.  Some are giant restaurant models, others are individual pizza ovens.  Each of these ovens has its own personality. The best advice from pizza masters is: Know Your Oven.

Wood Fired Oven

In a wood-fired pizza oven, the fire is built on one side.  The heat travels to the top of the oven, heating the roof. Therefore, the primary heat source is above and to the side of the pizza. That means a Kamado grill is built completely upside down for traditional pizza.

Wood Fired Oven

Original Pizza Cooking Challenge

 The heat source is below the pizza, making pizza cooking challenging. The trick is to limit how much heat comes up through the stone, and maximize how much heat gets focused on the top of the pizza. Here is an illustration of the challenge of cooking a pizza in a Kamado grill. The heat from underneath the pizza is deflected by the platesetter, but it is then rushing out the chimney.

This imbalance is complicated when you lift the dome to add or check a pizza. All the heat of the dome escapes - and- the dome actually loses some of its energy. Even though the air temperature seems to pop right back up, the dome is cooler and therefore radiating less energy to the top of your pizza.

Optimal Setup

Using the Pizza-Porta allows you to cap off the top and heat up the inside of the oven dome to cook your pizza evenly on the top and bottom.  By capping off the chimney, you trap the heat inside the dome. This heat provides the energy to power up the radiant capability of the ceramic dome. As this heat escapes through the adjustable side vents that are below the top of the over it travels across the top of the pizza delivering convection heating as well. The wedge shape conforms to the top and bottom and works in conjunction with the door to maintain temperature control.

The problem of cooking pizza in a kamado grill is not that The Stone is Too Hot. The problem is that the Dome is Too Cool to balance the hot stone.

Pizza cooks at high temperature: even, consistent, high temperature.

Setup is very important to cooking. By capturing all of the energy in the dome, a grill equipped with a Pizza-Porta will perform significantly different whether you are cooking one pizza or twenty.

See our other articles including the ultimate guide for kamado grill pizza setup.

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