Beginner's guide to Making Pizza in a Kamado Grill
If you are considering cooking pizza in your Big Green Egg or Vision, or another kamado-style grill, here is what you need to know to make pizza. We got so excited about making pizza at home that we invented a device to take it to the next level. This guide applies to pizza cooking on a kamado grill with or without a Pizza-Porta.
Once you have seen what is possible on your ceramic grill, check out the Pizza-Porta to really step up your game. We designed a specific modification of the cooking chamber for hours of steady, even pizza temperatures.
Introduction
A kamado/ceramic grill allows cooking over a real wood fire and it gives you the control you need to cook at higher temperatures. These are perfect attributes for pizza. Cooking at over 500℉ degrees (beyond the capabilities of your home oven) unlocks a whole new pizza experience. The high temperature is the key to making exceptional pizza crust. If you are starting out, shoot for 600°F.
Dough
To make a great pizza you will need to start with great dough. Dough matters. The “internet” has empowered many people to share their dough recipes. Often these recipes are appropriated from other sources without a clear understanding of why the ingredients are included. The dough that you make must match the temperature of your oven. You can not take a recipe from a pizza master with a wood-fired oven in Naples, cook it at 500°F and recreate that same magical crust. Conversely, if you find a home-oven recipe that works at 450°F it will likely turn black in an 800°F oven. To make or source dough, choose the cooking temperature first. The easiest way to start is to buy a 7.5 oz raw dough from a good pizza restaurant that uses an electric deck oven and shoot for a 600°F cook. If you are making your own dough, make sure your dough includes some browning agents like sugar and oil. For the full explanation see this BLOG, and for a recipe for these temperatures try one of THESE.
A couple of pointers on making dough if you have never made it before. First, bread baking and dough making are very different than baking a cake or following a cooking recipe. There is a skill that you develop around identifying how to work with the dough and the tiny adjustments you can make that change its character. How you treat the dough is as important as what is included in the recipe. If you have never handled a raw pizza dough, go buy a raw dough ball from a restaurant and feel its consistency and dryness. The second point is that precision is critical for dough recipes. A recipe for 5 dough balls calls for 3 grams of yeast. Keeping that same proportion for every batch is a challenge. One extra gram would be 33% too much yeast. That is why you should always weigh all of the ingredients as precisely as possible. Make the same recipe exactly the same way a couple of times and you will learn the nuances. You can also tell from this proportion that it would be nearly impossible to make 1 pizza dough. Make 4 or 5 dough balls in a batch and use them all or freeze the leftovers.
Wood-fired pizzas are traditionally 12” regardless of the size of the oven. This size dough (7.5 oz or 230g) is easy to ball, it is easy to stretch, and it is easier to launch onto the stone. Since the cooking temperature is high for these pizzas, you can make a couple of different pizzas in succession rather than trying to construct a half-pepperoni and a third without onions.
Tools
To cook your first pizza in a kamado-style grill you will need a couple of tools (this is an intro guide). In addition to your ceramic grill, at a bare minimum, you will need these items: 1) A plate setter/heat deflector. 2) A pizza stone (see details HERE) 3) A wooden pizza peel. 4) A pizza cutter, 5) A baker’s scale
Some additional items that you are going to want to cook pizza are 1) A metal pizza peel, 2) A stone brush, 3) An infrared thermometer, 4) A Pizza-Porta (more info HERE) 5) A charcoal basket/grate
Finally, if you are getting into pizza there are some items that will make it even more consistent and enjoyable. 1) Dough boxes (that fit in your refrigerator), 2)Double rack 3)Ingredient holding trays 4)Piping bags 5)Pizza-Size cutting boards
Up to Temperature
Now for the fun part. Once you have the dough figured out and have acquired the tools that you need it is time to start cooking. If you have not cooked at high temperatures in your kamado for a while your grill is probably “seasoned’ with all sorts of remnants from past cooks. When you get over 500° those remnants will create quite a bit of smoke. Before you light the fire, start by scraping off your deflector stones and cleaning out the firebox. Then, get the remnants burned off so that the bitter smoke does not taint your pizza. There are some tricks to getting the grill up to high temperatures. Good airflow and good, dry charcoal are primary but see HERE for a full list.
Now your dough is ready, the grill has burned off the drippings, let’s cook some pizza. Cooking pizza (without a Pizza-Porta) is a little like threading the needle on a kamado grill. Get the stone and the dome both to 550-600℉ degrees at the same time and cook within that window. The grill will take about 30 minutes to reach temperature but monitor it very closely because it is difficult to cool the stone or the dome once you are underway.
Build a Pizza
When you reach that temperature window, get the pizza on the stone right away.
Retrieve a raw pizza dough and place it on a countertop that has been dusted with flour. Using your hands, not a rolling pin, flatten the dough out in the center. Leave a 1/2” curb undisturbed around the outside edge. If you don’t press the air out this edge will rise and make that nice high, puffy crust edge. Place your palms on the middle of the dough and stretch it and then turn, stretch it then turn until you have a 12” circle. Put some semolina on your wooden peel and place the dough on the peel. Add pizza ingredients to your dough while it is on the peel. Do not overload this style of pizza. When you cook at high temperatures, thick layers of ingredients will keep the crust from getting fully cooked.
Load it in the Oven
Be sure a burp your egg before you place the pizza! Place your wood pizza peel with the raw pizza on it over the hot pizza stone and then jiggle and slide the pizza peel out from under the raw pizza. Close the dome right away. Pizza is one of the few foods that you cook by eye. There is no time and temperature combination that you can calculate to see when the pizza is done. You have to (burp the egg!) take a look. Check the pizza often and turn it as it browns. Check the bottom and pull the pizza out when the crust is done on the bottom. You can use a metal spatula to check and to get the wooden peel under the cooked pizza. Retrieve the cooked pizza and slide it onto a cutting board with a flourish. (pro-tip: do not cut the pizza on the wooden peel)
Now that the first pizza is done you will need to get the egg back on track to cook the second pizza. If the stone is too hot after the first pizza you will need to shut all the vents down and wait until the stone loses some heat. If the grill has cooled too much, open up the vents and get the temperature back to that 550-600℉ sweet spot again. If you are using the Pizza-Porta, the temperature will be about the same pizza to pizza, so get that second pie in.
Conclusion
We wanted to share the basic how-to of cooking pizza on a kamado. This guide should help you get started. We started by using all of the hacks like looking in with a cell phone or propping open the door with a pizza wedge that we found in the forums. The Pizza-Porta was born out of the desire to go beyond the shortcomings and make full-fledge wood-fired pizza. Capping the top keeps the dome hot and traps heat for convection and radiant cooking. Closing the door retains the airflow control, keeping the stone and the dome at similar temperatures pizza after pizza. Try making pizzas and see if it is something that you want to add to your grilling repertoire.
When you are ready to take it to the next level, we are only a click away.
There is nothing like the taste of great pizza cooked on your ceramic grill with a Pizza-Porta
Hot and Ready for Pizza with the Pizza-Porta