How does Pizza-Porta Work? And does it make a difference for one pizza?

How does Pizza-Porta work?

You are already an expert in adjusting your kamado grill airflow to reach the right cooking temperature for the right amount of time.  For a Boston Butt, that cook can be 10 hours at a steady 225ºF.  Cooking a chicken may take 3 hours at 325ºF. The temperature and time must be dialed-in for the specific food you are cooking. Pizza is no different.  Pizza evolved from the ability of a wood-fired oven to cook at really high temperatures for a short period of time.  Pizza also has high variability in its cooking time, due to its construction (more on that later).  

This is a running graph of an actual cooking session on a large Big Green Egg®.  The left shows the temperature over time with the Pizza-Porta installed. The right side is the same cooking session after the Pizza-Porta was removed.  In each case, the pizza was checked at the times indicated by the red arrows.  The Pizza-Porta obviously keeps the heat inside.

Note that overall, the temperature stayed at 500F with the Pizza-Porta installed, meaning the stone and the dome temperatures were stable throughout that time. Without the Pizza-Porta, all the heat escaped and then the air temperature recovered - what is not illustrated here is that the dome is allowed to cool each time. The dome is the source of radiant energy to cook the top of the pizza. Also note that without the Pizza-Porta, the overall temperature unintentionally climbed nearly 100 degrees.

Does it matter?

It is widely known that when you lift the lid, heat escapes from the oven.  How does that impact a pizza cook? For comparison, in a 10 hour cook, opening the lid to check the temperature for a total of 2 minutes, results in a cook session with the desired temperature 99.6% of the time. That is precise cooking.  A pizza cooks for only 3 or 4 minutes at 600° or 700°.  Opening the dome to place a pizza and check it only once could mean the cooking temperature is below the desired level for 25%-30% of the cooking time! That is why there are so many hacks for cooking pizza in the Egg.

The other challenge is the variability of cooking time due to pizza construction.  A dough weighs around 7-8 oz.  Add cheese and a basic pizza is about 12 oz total.  The next pizza, however, may have 4 oz of meat and vegetables.  That is a 33% difference in weight, plus a completely different moisture profile. You can’t accurately estimate the cooking time for each pizza you load. The only way to ensure that a pizza is cooked perfectly each time is to check its progress visually from time to time. The graph above shows that the patented design of the Pizza-Porta will keep a consistent temperature for cooking your wood-fired Pizza no matter how many times you peek. A rapid oven temperature drop will ruin a pizza every time. 

Will I really notice a difference?

The Pizza-Porta helps solve these common pizza-cooking problems:

Black-bottom pizza - by trapping all of the heat in the dome, the top of your pizza cooks at the same rate as the bottom. And, you can peek under the dough as it cooks to see the progress.

Undercooked toppings - Preserving the radiant energy of the dome allows it to melt the cheese and brown the crust edges.

Flat edge pizzas - Pizza cooked properly rises and then hardens leaving a puffy, light crust. If the temperature fluctuates, the bubbles can deflate before hardening giving the crust a heavy, dense character.  Pizza-Porta keeps the oven temperature steady.

Goldilocks pizza - (When the first pizza is ok, the second one is fantastic, and the third is burned.) Pizza-Porta keeps oven temperature consistent so every cook is the same.

Submarine driving stress - (The stress of cooking blind with only a stopwatch and a thermometer)  With Pizza-Porta you open the door and check the pizza without affecting the temperature.

Craving Authenticity - Your kamado grill uses natural lump wood charcoal to provide heat and flames like a wood-fired oven. The faint crackle of the fire and natural dance of flames trump the loud blast of a propane torch cooking your pizza.

Toasted eyeballs - No need to hold a flashlight and stick one eye in the chimney - just open the Pizza-Porta door and check.

Stuck Landing - Pizza will not stick to a stone that is properly heated. You won’t have to throttle down the temperatures to keep the bottom from burning. The dome is kept hot so the top cooks as fast as the bottom.

Red, hairless wrist syndrome - The Pizza-Porta door is small so flashbacks are minimized (And, If you like your beard, you need a Pizza-Porta) 

Angry pizza mob - The Pizza-Porta captures the heat that normally shoots out of the chimney. Capturing this heat creates an oven environment where radiant, transfer and convection energy are all focused to cook your pizza. This intense heat cooks your pizza much faster- 3-4 minutes at high temperatures. And, if you have a big crowd, a double rack can be added to cook two at a time. Keep up with pizza demand!

Do I really need a Pizza-Porta to make authentic pizza?

Sliding a raw dough into a hot, domed, wood-fired oven is the way pizza has been cooked for centuries. When you take control of your pizza cooking with a Pizza-Porta and check, turn, and dome a pizza to achieve that perfect char you will understand why this ancient method of cooking lives on today.

Cook like a real wood-fired pizza restaurant and you will be amazed by the results!

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