Pizza Stone IR Temps

[Loquitur]

A fellow on the BGE forum tracked the temp rise of a pizza stone with an IR meter. 15 min after lighting the grill he put a plate setter and pizza stone in - the temp near the fire was 890 deg. It took 10 more min for the dome temp to reach 500 deg where it remained. After 50 min at 500 deg, the pizza stone was 345 deg. 20 min later the stone got up to 469 deg. At this point, 95 min after lighting the grill, his family was getting anxious so he did the pizzas. He said the later ones were more consistently cooked than the earlier ones. It was an interesting post.

[Amphoran]

That fits with my experience. It takes my stone a couple of hours to get fully heat soaked. Letting it do so makes much better and more consistent pizzas.

In fact, I've taken to often doing them in my oven - heat soak for two hours at 550, then turn on the broiler for 5 minutes while prepping the pizza. Turn off the broiler and slide in the pie.

The extra heat in the top of the stone helps get the right amount of char on the bottom of the pie, and helps keep the stone temp up. Thin pies cook in 4-5 minutes with this technique.

Mike