Testing KettlePizza and Baking Steel's New Joint Pizza Oven (2013)

[bobflorian]

I have the Kettle Pizza with Baking Steel, and honestly, it's garbage. It's not worth the effort to set up once a week to get mediocre, not very repeatable results. Pretty sure I've ruined my Weber Kettle by using it too.

I got a RoccBox last summer (after watching Kenji's review videos) and it's freaking amazing. It's not much more effort to setup. So easy to just turn on the gas and wait for it to heat up.

I've been making VPN-ish style pizzas for 10 years at home and have a lot of experience with gadget and tips and tricks, and the Kettle Pizza just seemed too gimicky after I got it, and tried it once. Was honestly disappointing I spent so much money on it.

This is my go-to guide: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm ; Jeff is a great guy; talked with him for few minutes in ATL.

[bobflorian]

The "baking steel" required too much maintenance, and rusted to pieces and started dropping rust flakes into my food. The radiant heat effect was very small, and I nearly always burned the bottom of my crusts before the top was charred, even when doming the food.

The sheer amount of fuel you have to put in to get up to temp was absurd too. Having a 900 degree raging fire in my weber kettle sure made me nervous, even for hours after I was done making pizzas.

[basch]

When you say you ruined your weber did it warp?

I got a cheap piece of steel and had it in a gas grill and the front of the grill bowed.

[seiferteric]

For a lower cost option it might be okay, but there are a lot of small standalone gas/wood pizza ovens you can buy now that will get much better results. I myself recently got a roccbox and it is fantastic. There are similar ones out there for something like half the cost though that are probably as or nearly as good, blackstone, uuni, napoli etc.

[wvl]

In fact Kenji reviewed some of these ovens two years ago: https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/05/best-backyard-pizza-oven...

[dangerboysteve]

Purchased a Roccbox last year and it's a fantastic well designed portable pizza oven. Used it a ton of times and have loaned it to family and they loved it. Although I has only used the gas burner attachment I like having the wood rocket stove option. Worth the money.

I also own a custom cut baking steel for indoor cooks and bread.

[anthonybsd]

I looked into a bunch of these too for my ceramic grills and ended up going with a standalone oven too (Ooni Koda). Couldn't be happier. Perfect Neapolitan pies every time in about 2 minutes, and super portable.

[resters]

Thanks for posting that. I hadn't realized those existed!

[basch]

Can anyone explain why the bottom layer is stone and not steel, is it more marketing than anything?

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/10/pizza-hack-baking-copper...

[mohaine]

I'm guessing it is due to the temperature the oven can reach. A normal oven can only hit 500F but once you get much higher than that the steel works too well, casing the crust to burn before the toppings (or top crust) are properly cooked.

I recently retired my steel after moving due to how much hotter my new oven gets. With the steel sheet you had burnt curst with little to no browning on the top. Switching back to my stone evened things out.

[cmclaughlin]

Kenji has some other articles about baking steel that mention it's excellent ability to radiate head downward and cook the top of the pizza.

Personally, I make pizza in the oven in my home and avoid baking steel because at high temperatures the seasoning (oil) burns off.

[benj111]

Theres probably a cost/ durability element. You want that thick metal plate to be stainless steel (expensive), or protected in some way (slightly less expensive), wood ash is caustic, so could eat though unprotected steel quite quickly if not properly maintained.

It may be possible an over enthusiastic bbqer to overheat the metal plate, I don't know how likely that would be in real life though.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I don't enjoy the burned Neapolitan pizza style.

[asark]

If you want something chewier you can make a pretty damn good pan pizza with just a... well, a pan. A cast-iron skillet, specifically. Electric heat gun or small butane torch optional but recommended to start the surface cooking while you heat the oiled-pan-with-pizza-in-it on the stovetop before putting it in the oven. Probably you'll still need to run the broiler a bit. I prefer the results from a pizza stone but the pan method's not bad, requires less special equipment (stone, peel), makes less mess (that blasted cornmeal/farina) and is harder to screw up in a way that makes an even larger mess, when you're starting out—failed peel transfers can go very wrong.

[seiferteric]

Totally fine obviously to have a preference. I would mention that even NY style pizza is typically cook at temperatures higher than your home oven can get, so this type of thing can still be useful. NY Pizzas I think are typically cooked between 550 - 650 degrees Fahrenheit I think.

[RankingMember]

Yeah, I don't get the appeal. It makes a pretty picture, but I don't want to eat charcoal.

[zwaps]

Obviously it should not be burnt. That's just really hard to do.

[intsunny]

This is not an unpopular opinion. Its just not the cool opinion, so it becomes unpopular.

Thankfully NYC pizza is the world's most globally emulated.

[phonypc]

I sometimes enjoy charred flavor on things, but Neapolitan style is always way too soggy for me. Even more so in Naples itself. If it weren't for the historical aspect I'd say it's not even pizza.

[ecommerceguy]

I try to stay away from burnt foods as I am already at an increased risk for cancers. That burnt crust has elevated levels of Acrylamide.

[starpilot]

Makes me think of how an efficient way of removing smoke quickly from a cooking element, without having a fancy hood, would make cooking a variety of foods easier. I can't make steaks too often because it fumigates my entire apartment.

[legohead]

My FIL in Russia built a metal box contraption he used to smoke fish in his flat/apartment. Put fish inside w/wood chips or whatever you use to smoke, then place it on the gas stove and light it up. It had a vent hole on the top and he would connect it with flex pipes to his flat's oven hood. Worked very well, kept nearly all the smell and smoke away.

[arprocter]

Something similar to those tubes they have in Korean BBQ joints connected to a window fan might work

You'd need to figure out how to tether it above the stove though

[batbomb]

(2013)

[sctb]

Thanks! Updated.

[cascom]

honestly the baking steel in the regular oven works pretty well as long as you make an effort with the dough (make a few days ahead/doing a cold ferment + using OO flour)

[asark]

Stone and peel with a normal 550-degree-max oven, bread-machine-prepped dough using ordinary bread flour, cheese one notch above Kraft, and fresh veggies, will leave all the chains in the dust. You can get even better busting out the standing mixer and specially-sourced flour, cold-fermenting, et c., but anyone looking to get started should know you can absolutely produce pies no-one'll complain about by going the cheap & lazy route.

[tunesmith]

I've seen mention a few times that the true traditional Neapolitan pizzas made in Italy are gluten-free. Does anyone know how they make their dough?

[asark]

Extremely unlikely. Gluten's what makes pizza dough stretchy, and holds it together. Usually you want very high gluten flours for pizza. Wikipedia confirms that the Neapolitan style calls for (ideally) 0 or 00 flour, which is to say, high gluten.

For it to be gluten free it'd have to be... IDK, corn or rice-flour or something, with some chemical mumbo-jumbo performed to make it hold together well enough to make a pizza.

[seiferteric]

Definitely not. In fact like many foods in Europe, there are standards/guildlines(sometimes laws) regarding certain traditional foods. You can download the "official" regulations regarding Neapolitan pizza making here: https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana

[mrob]

Some pizza doughs are fermented as sourdough, which degrades gluten, but if you ferment a wheat dough long enough to become gluten free it will become too soupy to make pizzas. You need the gluten for it to hold together when you stretch it.

[kansface]

Traditional dough is flour, water, salt, and yeast (the first two things and time). I strongly doubt anyone in Naples would consider a pizza without wheat flour to actually be a pizza.

[Pfhreak]

That sounds apocryphal to me. Every pizza dough recipe I've ever seen includes wheat flour and water.