Pizza Peel Review

I love baking pizzas on the Big Green Egg.  It's become a family friday mainstay.  The problem though has been getting the darn thing in and out of the grill.  So last week I went around town searching for a pizza peel and found two that were well priced and well made.

Whenever I go to a brick oven pizza place I notice that the guys making the pies always use wooden pizza peels which makes sense as the dough is less likely to stick then it would to another material such as metal.  But why hate on metal?  Wouldn't enough flour keep the dough form sticking?  So I figured, "Hell.  Let's break from the norm. Let's give metal a chance."  

The wooden peel that I purchased is from a company called Ironwood Gourmet.  It looks great.  It's got a nice, wide surface area with a 14inch diameter and is 1/4 inch thick.  I paid $18 for it.

The metal peel has a smaller surface area at 11inches and is only 2/16 of an inch thick and has a nice long handle.  I picked this up at a restaurant supply store for only $10. (If you're interested in the manufacturer I will look it up)

After getting them home and cooking some pizzas I made a few surprising discoveries.  To the notes!

To begin, I used the same amount of flour before putting the dough on and neither of the peels seemed to be stickier than the other.  Metal does not seem to make a difference as long as you place enough flour on the surface area.

The size of the handle (keep your jokes to yourself) does not really matter.  The one difference I really liked was the round handle of the metal peel over the squared handle of the wooden peel (Which I found is common to wooden peels).

The other thing I really liked about the metal peel is that the peel itself is super thin.  Anyone who has a BGE knows that when you're trying to get a pizza on the pizza stone it's like trying to land a plane on an island that's the same size as the plane itself.  And if you fall off you don't drown but get dragged into scorching hot magma.

The thinness of the metal peel made it much easier to slide the pizza on the stone and for getting the pizza off the stone.  With the wooden peel being 1/4 inch thick, you need another tool to lift up an end of the pizza just to get the darn peel under it.  There were a couple of times that I started to push the main course into the fire.

So there you have it.  Make a dash to your local restaurant supply store and grab one or follow the link below.  It will make baking pizzas a breeze.

Apple Pie Time

Pie?  On a grill?
Craziest thing you've heard right?  I had read about eggheads baking on the egg and since the pizzas I cooked demanded a temp of 600 degrees, I figured why let all of that heat go to waste.  I let the temp come down to 400 by almost completely closing the vents.
I removed the pizza stone (while wearing an oven mitt of course) and placed the pyrex dish of goodness on the cooking grid.
Fifty minutes later......voila!

In the future I probably wouldn't fire up the egg just to bake a pie but since it was already preheated it made sense.


Man 1 - Grill 0

Pizza Pizza

So I've grilled some wings, pork tenderloin with a cayenne and coffee dry rub (That was awesome!  Will definitely do that again and cover it in this blog.) and I've grilled a whole chicken.  

So the in-laws came over this past weekend and I decided I was going to bake some pizzas.  I had heard that the egg is essentially, with a few eggcessories, a brick oven.  All you need is a place setter and a baking stone.  

Despite the rain I began to fill the egg up with natural lump charcoal until it reached the top of the firebox.  We need this baby to get up to 600 degrees.  After about 7 minutes and the coals are lit, place your place setter, legs up on the fire ring. (the place setter that BGE sells is great for this but there are other ways to create a firewall).  This will provide the barrier you will need for indirect cooking.  Without it, your pizza will resemble the charcoal at the bottom of your grill.  Once the place setter is in place lay the cooking grid on top and then a baking or pizza stone on top of that.

Now close the lid and leave the draft door completely open.  Since we are trying to achieve a high temp there is no need to have the daisy wheel on.  (If you prefer to leave it on, just open it all the way.)

Note that it may take some time for the egg to reach its desired temp with all of this "stuff" in there.  

Since you're waiting to get to 600 degrees this is the perfect time to prep your pizza.

Spare time is not a luxury that I have so we purchased some pre made pizza dough from Whole Foods.  Maybe one day I can make my own :(

I used just a tiny bit of tomato sauce and then some fresh basil, sliced tomatoes and fresh buffalo mozzarella. 

By now you should have a temperature around 600 degrees.  Sprinkle a little corn meal on the pizza stone.  This will help keep the dough from sticking to the stone. and then slide that sucker into the egg.  I picked up a wooden paddle that works great for transferring the pizza to and from the egg) and about 6-8 minutes later it should be done.

It was like magic when I lifted the lid and saw this delicious looking pizza sitting my in my egg.

We all agreed that it was one of the best pizzas we've ever eaten.  No need to order out ever again and now my father-in-law wants an egg.


Man 1 - Grill 0

1st Cook

For my first cook I thought I would do something really simple.  I've never grilled on an egg before and I wanted to get used to controlling the temperature before moving on to something more involved.  I decided to smoke some wings.  No sauce or dry rub.  Just basic salt and pepper.  I chose to use some applewood chips and let these baby's sit for almost an hour.

They were some of the best wings I've ever had.  If this is a glimpse of what is to come, I see this as the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The Finished Product

And here you have it.  I added a retractable side table with some folding shelf brackets and a leftover piece of Corian.  I also added some hooks for my grilling utensils and a towel bar for those quick clean-ups.
Overall, this was a really fun project.  I probably put around 20 hours of work into this and the price tag came in under $150. 
Time to start cooking!!!

The Corian Countertop

The Corain countertop I bought off of Craigslist is not long enough for the table but luckily there is a shorter separate piece that came with it.  The idea is to JB Weld these two pieces together so that the hole I will route out for the egg will be in the middle of this seam.  The great thing about the countertop is that the front edge is rounded over and it looks great.  

The circular saw and router cut right through the Corian like it was butter.  I would highly recommend wearing a respirator and eye protection while doing this.
It made an ungodly mess but it looks awesome!!!

Table Sections, Unite!

So here it is.  Finally all of the pieces have come together.  While my wife and I were working on rehabbing our house we were using this as a bench.  It's extremely sturdy and I couldn't be any happier with it.  I'm going to use a deck stain from the Depot that you can add paint to.  I'm leaning towards a color with white in it as it will match the Corian countertop I've picked up on Craigslist.  Some guy has remodeled his kitchen and wants it gone.  Great deal for me!  $25 a square foot would end up costing close to $300!!!  Not affordable.