Who are we and why did we make this device?

I am Cortlandt Minnich, the inventor of the Pizza-Porta.

I am a huge fan of Kamado grill cooking. I grew up with Dad's early version before the Big Green Egg® back in the late 60's. More recently in my own backyard, I was enjoying the limelight of making great Butts, Turkeys, Steaks, and other outstanding BGE cooks. Then it happened. A friend bought a full-blown wood-fired brick pizza oven for his backyard.

I noticed four things:

1) A wood-fired pizza oven makes wonderful pizza!

2) A pizza party with a wood-fired oven is a fun event for everyone. The oven is ready, friends are gathered around talking and drinking wine. As you create pizzas, each one initiates a new wave of excitement. When you pull the next piping hot pizza out and present it on a cutting board you are a hero.

3) A wood-fired oven is unobtrusive throughout an evening of cooking. It is quiet, the temperature is steady for hours, and you can adjust each pizza based on consistent oven characteristics.

4) A real-deal wood-fired pizza oven is really big and expensive.

My Egg hits high temperatures and is a radiant dome design just like a brick oven, so this would be easy I thought. The brochures show beautiful pizzas cooking on a pristine, clean pizza stone. I then checked the BGE blogs and saw that asking about pizza cooking is like asking what kind of lump is best. I have worked in product management and innovation for big corporations my whole career. I love a good product challenge. I began my quest to make great wood-fired pizzas in the Egg.

In my early experiences, sometimes pizza was underdone on top, sometimes the bottom was black, and occasionally the pizza was good. This was not acceptable. I found that cooking a pizza on the Egg was like driving a submarine; blind with only a stopwatch and a thermometer. I also noticed that I completely surrendered control of the temperature every time I opened the dome. (which also let all the heat escape). Finally, even when the pizza was cooked correctly, it did not have that light, airy, crust that I experienced from a wood-fired oven.

To make it worse, pizza parties were not fun for me because I was stressed out worrying about what I would find when I lifted the lid.

So after a multitude of handmade prototypes, a lot of geometry textbook review, help from a friend who is a great pizza maker, and a very patient wife:

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I bring you the Pizza-Porta®

So, what is going on here that is different than just using a pizza stone?

Unlike a Boston butt or a turkey, pizza only cooks for a few precious minutes. Great pizza crust is dependent upon heating up at a consistent rate without interruption See this article for full details. Using a door and vents retains the heat so that each pizza enters a consistent, high-temperature cooking chamber.
The temperature is also steady in the Pizza-Porta from one pizza to the next. You can estimate how long the next pizza will cook. And, by trapping the heat and heating the ceramic dome, the temperature is balanced above and below the pizza, so the top and bottom cook at the same rate.
The Pizza-Porta allows you to adjust for each pizza - just like your favorite pizza chef. Open the door and turn it, lift the edge to check it, put it back in for a second, lift it up into the dome for that final top sear. You have the ability to control exactly how you want to cook each pizza without losing your heat.
The Pizza-Porta allows you to choose your cooking temperature. This is actually an advantage over a wood-fired oven. The door and vents retain precise temperature control and allow you to dial-in the temperature. Bread cooks at 350℉-400℉ degrees, thick crust pizzas may cook better at 500 degrees, thin Neapolitan pizzas are better at 700℉ degrees - control the airflow and you control the temperature.
Using the Pizza-Porta also delivers a couple of benefits I didn't anticipate. Retaining heat reduces fuel consumption. You can cook pizza for hours while you entertain friends - just like that big wood-fired brick pizza oven. Cooking at 650℉ in the Pizza-Porta is different than 650℉ without the Pizza-Porta. There is more heat focused on the pizza so it cooks faster and more thoroughly. Also, opening a small door does not fully ventilate the fire so you are at much lower risk of a flashback - keep those eyebrows and arm hairs! Finally, when you are done cooking, close the vents and the door and the fire will snuff out.
The Pizza-Porta was designed to be versatile. You control how the interior is configured. Use your current pizza stone setup, add lifters or spacers under the stone or use different size pans. And, the design is made to hold a rack for 2 stones so you can cook 2 pizzas at a time.
No more crazy hacks to cook a pizza. I slide a raw pizza onto the hot pizza stone, check it in a few minutes, turn it if the browning is uneven, pull it after 3.5 - 5 minutes and enjoy - just like wood-fired pizza places have been doing for centuries. I can do this over and over for an entire party without refilling charcoal. It is a real wood-fired pizza oven in the backyard.
Click to see our ultimate guide for your Kamado Grill Pizza setup

I hope you enjoy. Cortlandt

For more info on our startup story, see my interview with SHOUTOUT Atlanta: Shoutout

Oh, by the way, I do not use clip art on this site. Photographers vary, but all pizzas were made in a Pizza-Porta.

Visit our store - Here

Contact us for more information: support@pizza-porta.freshdesk.com