Pizza

Pizza (baking) on the Large Adjustable Rig Extender

Pizza and Baking are fan favorites in the Big Green Egg® and Kamado Joe®.  Both cooks can be done on the Adjustable Rig but each requires at least one ceramic stone.  A second stone may be necessary depending on the baking temperatures, type and thickness of the dough and your experience.  Since these are specialty cooks, we'll leave the exact details to you but most find success with pizza by raising the baking stone as high as possible in the dome.  

For pizza, setting the baking stone on the Rig Extender is recommended.  The pizza benefits from the reflective and convective heat patterns in the dome and the added distance from the lump helps maintain even temperatures through the stone.  If you find the dough bottom burns, then a second stone on the Spider or Rig Level 1.5 may be required.  Note with multiple stones, the bottom stone needs to be as big as the top stone(s).  This insures the rising heat is pushed out past the edges of the upper baking stone(s).

Care must be taken when setting the stone on Rig Level 4.5, at the felt line.  If the stone is too large, it can push the heat out toward felt lining.  If this lining is wool or similar material, the heat can burn the lining.  Again with pizza, we recommend setting the baking stone high in the dome (on Rig Extender) to minimize damage to the felt.

We are not much on making homemade pizza but we do enjoy baking fresh pizzas.  Our pizza choice is Pappa Murphy's 'take & bake' large thin crust pizza.  To bake the pizza, we use our 16" Round Ceramic Stone on the Rig Extender.  The 16" Stone matches well on size with Pappa Murphy's large thin crust pizza.  We only use the one stone, no second stone/platesetter underneath. If you do thicker dough pizza, you may need another stone below the pizza stone.  Baking temperatures are typically 425° F dome thermometer. The two pizzas below are Pappa Murphy's pizzas.

We played with baking two pizzas at the same time.  It can be done but this is truly a specialized cook as multiple stones absorb, convect and manage heat differently.  We recommend limiting the stone's diameter to 13" to help preserve the felt line.  The best set-up we found is the sliding grids indirect set-up:  

• Rig Level 1.5 - Indirect Stone on Crossbars;
• Rig Level 4.5 - Slide Guide set-up with 13" Stone on Oval Grid;
• Rig Extender - Oval Grid with 13" Stone on top. 

Having the pizza stones atop the Oval Grids in the sliding grids set-up makes it easy to rotate pizzas and/or the pizza stones.  Just rotate the two Oval Grids.  Our experience suggests the bottom pizza bakes quicker and overall cook times can be extended for both pizzas.   The pizza dough on the cooks below was Pillsbury's premade pizza dough.  Dough was rolled thin.  Both pizzas came from one Pillsbury tube.  The Stones are our 13" diameter Round Ceramic Stones.