Pizza oven to accompany the KK

[GeorgeFromOz]

Hi KK Enthusiasts,

Planning my dream BBQ area and stumbled across a photo of KK on Pinterest. Now I can’t do anything else. 

Problem is, the current design has a pizza oven and a gas bbq but no smoker or charcoal grill. 

Since seeing this, I am thinking ditch the gas and get a 23 or 32 KK.

My question is, do I still want / need the pizza oven?

Any advice?

Thanks 

George

 

[Pequod]

50 minutes ago, GeorgeFromOz said:

Hi KK Enthusiasts,

Planning my dream BBQ area and stumbled across a photo of KK on Pinterest. Now I can’t do anything else. 

Problem is, the current design has a pizza oven and a gas bbq but no smoker or charcoal grill. 

Since seeing this, I am thinking ditch the gas and get a 23 or 32 KK.

My question is, do I still want / need the pizza oven?

Any advice?

Thanks 

George

 

Up to you. KK’s do make awesome pizza, but there is something to be said for a Wood Fired Oven. How much of a diehard pizza cook are you? Tagging @ckreef who has two KK’s AND an awesome wood fired oven.

[ckreef]

48 minutes ago, GeorgeFromOz said:

 

My question is, do I still want / need the pizza oven?

 

 

Are we talking a Wood Fired Oven or some strange pizza only oven? Can you post the picture or link.?

 

I have 2 KK's, Primo Oval Jr, gas griddle, Konro Yakitori grill, and a Wood Fired Oven so if your asking me I wood keep the pizza oven as long as it's not some strange pizza only oven. 

 

My KK's are my everyday work horses. The Konro Yakitori grill and the Wood Fired Oven is my fun weekend grills. 

 

 

[GeorgeFromOz]

10 hours ago, ckreef said:

 

Are we talking a Wood Fired Oven or some strange pizza only oven? Can you post the picture or link.?

 

I have 2 KK's, Primo Oval Jr, gas griddle, Konro Yakitori grill, and a Wood Fired Oven so if your asking me I wood keep the pizza oven as long as it's not some strange pizza only oven. 

 

My KK's are my everyday work horses. The Konro Yakitori grill and the Wood Fired Oven is my fun weekend grills. 

 

 

Wow... that is quite a collection. 

Yes, I am referring to a wood fired oven. Something like this? 

[ckreef]

22 minutes ago, GeorgeFromOz said:

Wow... that is quite a collection. 

Yes, I am referring to a wood fired oven. Something like this? 

 

I would definitely want to keep that in the lineup. Mine is something similar. I use it about twice a month. There is something fun taming the live fire. I use it for more than just pizzas. 

 

[Syzygies]

On 6/16/2019 at 6:25 AM, ckreef said:

My KK's are my everyday work horses. The Konro Yakitori grill and the Wood Fired Oven is my fun weekend grills.

We have a 23" Ultimate KK, and a small Weber I sometimes use for preheating my smoke pot. Our neighbor has our previous K7 ceramic cooker, and a wide selection of other cookers including a pellet smoker, one of those South American grates that goes up and down, and a wood fired pizza oven.

I'll go out on a limb and say one can only achieve pizza greatness in a wood fired pizza oven. One can also lose a pizza in a blink of an eye; constant attention is needed. I also have experience with various roadside wood fired pizza ovens; a stand between Salem, OR and Monmouth, OR comes to mind. In general, a smaller wood fired pizza oven than a restaurant in Italy would choose saves fuel, time, space, and money, at the expense of the pizza. While I'm completely happy with my 23" KK and wouldn't change it out if I inherited another comma; my neighbors are already plotting a size up for their wood fired pizza oven. It's very simple: In a too-small oven, the fire is uneven, and the pizza needs frequent fiddling and turning. A larger oven is more stable.

If one knows one's KK and one's pizza recipe, and has a good sense of one's fire, one can pour wine at the table like there's no tomorrow, armed with only a timer for retrieving a credible finished pizza. The main issue with the KK (once one learns to get a hot enough but not excessive fire) is that the heat comes from below. I like using the KK double-walled drip pan as a heat deflector, to protect the KK pizza stone (as good as a Fibrament stone, and it fits) from radiant heat from the fire.

For a wood fired pizza oven, go big or go home.

[ckreef]

23 minutes ago, Syzygies said:

 

For a wood fired pizza oven, go big or go home.

 

I totally agree with that. Mine is 30" inside diameter. It sounds big but it's really sort of small. I make it work but if I had to do it over 42" inside diameter sounds much nicer. 

 

[Bruce Pearson]

I think a 42 inch pizza would be kool Charles lol. But a 30 inch one would also be awesome?

[Dan Diamond]

George - I have the 23" ultimate and I'm putting in an outdoor kitchen with a built-in pizza oven and my KK of course.  Let me give the KK some kudos first.  The KK makes some damn fine pizzas.  If I only had one piece of cooking equipment, its a Komodo Komado hands down. However, if you're making a true Neapolitan pizza, then ideally you need an oven that will get to 900-1000 degrees...which the KK will do but not easily and then the oven and the handle is hot to the touch.  If you're just cooking one pizza, then this works alright.  The issue with all kamado style cookers is that you can't see the pizza and every time you check it out, you're letting out the heat.  If you adjust your dough recipe, you'll make damn fine pizza's at 500-600 degrees but the same issues persist and each pizza takes a bit longer which dries out the pizza a little more.  Gas grills are for people in a hurry.  The one thing I've learned about cooking is the best stuff, takes a little longer, which gives you more time to enjoy the process, your friends and a good drink...or more.  In the end, I ditched the gas grill and I'm doing the KK and wood fired pizza oven for me...and a pellet smoker for my wife because its idiot proof.  This way, everybody is happy except for my wallet.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Dan Diamond
missed a few items

[Bruce Pearson]

I hope your wife doesn’t read your post LOL.

[MacKenzie]

3 hours ago, Bruce Pearson said:

I hope your wife doesn’t read your post LOL.

Exactly. 

[Astrid]

On 7/7/2019 at 6:28 AM, Dan Diamond said:

George - I have the 23" ultimate and I'm putting in an outdoor kitchen with a built-in pizza oven and my KK of course.  Let me give the KK some kudos first.  The KK makes some damn fine pizzas.  If I only had one piece of cooking equipment, its a Komodo Komado hands down. However, if you're making a true Neapolitan pizza, then ideally you need an oven that will get to 900-1000 degrees...which the KK will do but not easily and then the oven and the handle is hot to the touch.  If you're just cooking one pizza, then this works alright.  The issue with all kamado style cookers is that you can't see the pizza and every time you check it out, you're letting out the heat.  If you adjust your dough recipe, you'll make damn fine pizza's at 500-600 degrees but the same issues persist and each pizza takes a bit longer which dries out the pizza a little more.  Gas grills are for people in a hurry.  The one thing I've learned about cooking is the best stuff, takes a little longer, which gives you more time to enjoy the process, your friends and a good drink...or more.  In the end, I ditched the gas grill and I'm doing the KK and wood fired pizza oven for me...and a pellet smoker for my wife because its idiot proof.  This way, everybody is happy except for my wallet.

I agree on gas grills. For example, all of these portable ovens are designed to make pizza quickly. That's the choice for those who don't care about size, but it's possible enough to make 13"-23" pizzas, which is enough for small parties. 

The image is broken. Was it like that? Because my husband is planning to build a setup like this around our KK.

[DennisLinkletter]

For Neapolitan pizza I recommend using a baking steel at 450º rather than my baking stone at 900º you will get the exact leoparding on your crust and bake times.  Check out Kenji’s posts on Modernist Cusines page.

[GeorgeFromOz]

Update on this. I ended up with both a 120 inch Wood Fired Oven and a 32' KK.

I just couldn't bare to compromise. Thanks for your advice.

[Pequod]

32 minutes ago, GeorgeFromOz said:

Update on this. I ended up with both a 120 inch Wood Fired Oven and a 32' KK.

I just couldn't bare to compromise. Thanks for your advice.

Pics of this setup? 😬

[SSgt93]

The reason why I’m such a Komodo fan is that they do everything really well. From cold smoking cheese to high temp pizzas, they accomplish the task and do it to perfection.

As a huge fan of pizza, we make them often when having a family night or friends over. Everyone can make their own and that makes things better while keeping the conversation flowing.

These were done on a 42” Serious Big Bad.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Syzygies]

On 7/6/2019 at 8:28 PM, Dan Diamond said:

However, if you're making a true Neapolitan pizza, then ideally you need an oven that will get to 900-1000 degrees...

My neighbors have a wood-fired pizza oven. It's wonderful.

I took some cooking classes with an Italian "engineer" (actually Silicon Valley upper management) who retired wealthy at forty, and now teaches as a hobby. She took temperature readings at many of the best pizzerias in Italy, to understand pizza for herself. 900-1000 degrees is a simplistic myth. Yes, if your life depends on finding that reading somewhere in a wood-fired pizza oven, you could manage. If you instead read on the internet that this is the ideal temperature, and try to replicate it indiscriminately, you'll make suboptimal pizza.

Where I grew up, I'd hear people say "ASSUME makes an ass out of you and me". They're still saying it fifty years later. I observe something similar in mathematics: It's human nature to clamp down for days, weeks, months, or years on a catchy idea. It's also extraordinarily poor intellectual form. For comparison, competitive swimmers are in great physical condition, but they excel because of ideal form. It is simplistic to believe that our best scientists excel because of raw intelligence. Generally, from what I've observed, they too have better form. They encounter a catchy idea, and their reaction is "I want that experience again in five minutes, with another new idea!" They don't get stuck on single ideas.

I've seen many people get stuck on the single idea that a pizza oven should be 900-1000 degrees.

The KK is not as nimble as a wood-fired pizza oven at making pizza, though both respond to careful attention. I'm sure that you know that 900-1000 degrees is an oversimplification. The state of any cooker is a high-dimensional time-evolving slurry of information we barely take in, poorly captured by single numbers. I cringe when these numbers are repeated, for I've seen how people take them literally.

[BIGSHEP]

1 hour ago, SSgt93 said:

The reason why I’m such a Komodo fan is that they do everything really well. From cold smoking cheese to high temp pizzas, they accomplish the task and do it to perfection.

As a huge fan of pizza, we make them often when having a family night or friends over. Everyone can make their own and that makes things better while keeping the conversation flowing.

These were done on a 42” Serious Big Bad.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Let me know the next time your cooking pizza. I want to put my order in.

[Dan Diamond]

Wow..."poor intellectual form".  Not sure that was quite necessary in the pizza forum.  Putting that out there might make it look like you simply have poor manners.  You're right, I oversimplified the range.  The precise range for those knowledgeable about Neapolitan pizza is  430-480 Celsius which is 806 - 896 degrees Fahrenheit.  These ranges are actually set by the AVPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana).  For true Neapolitan pizza, there are rules.  Feel free to review them here https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana. 

Can you make good pizza following numerous other methods.  Absolutely.  I made some fantastic pizza's on the KK.  I just needed to adjust the hydration level of the dough to the oven I was using.  However, would they be considered true Neapolitan pizza...nope.  Would they be considered some damn fine pizza...yep!  

On more fun notes, George, damn fine purchase.  Enjoy the journey and share some pictures of the new oven and new pizzas.  

 

1 hour ago, Syzygies said:

My neighbors have a wood-fired pizza oven. It's wonderful.

I took some cooking classes with an Italian "engineer" (actually Silicon Valley upper management) who retired wealthy at forty, and now teaches as a hobby. She took temperature readings at many of the best pizzerias in Italy, to understand pizza for herself. 900-1000 degrees is a simplistic myth. Yes, if your life depends on finding that reading somewhere in a wood-fired pizza oven, you could manage. If you instead read on the internet that this is the ideal temperature, and try to replicate it indiscriminately, you'll make suboptimal pizza.

Where I grew up, I'd hear people say "ASSUME makes an ass out of you and me". They're still saying it fifty years later. I observe something similar in mathematics: It's human nature to clamp down for days, weeks, months, or years on a catchy idea. It's also extraordinarily poor intellectual form. For comparison, competitive swimmers are in great physical condition, but they excel because of ideal form. It is simplistic to believe that our best scientists excel because of raw intelligence. Generally, from what I've observed, they too have better form. They encounter a catchy idea, and their reaction is "I want that experience again in five minutes, with another new idea!" They don't get stuck on single ideas.

I've seen many people get stuck on the single idea that a pizza oven should be 900-1000 degrees.

The KK is not as nimble as a wood-fired pizza oven at making pizza, though both respond to careful attention. I'm sure that you know that 900-1000 degrees is an oversimplification. The state of any cooker is a high-dimensional time-evolving slurry of information we barely take in, poorly captured by single numbers. I cringe when these numbers are repeated, for I've seen how people take them literally.

Wow..."poor intellectual form".  Not sure that was quite necessary in the pizza forum.  Putting that out there might make it look like you simply have poor manners.  You're right, I oversimplified the range.  The precise range for those knowledgeable about Neapolitan pizza is  430-480 Celsius which is 806 - 896 to degrees Fahrenheit.  These ranges are actually set by the AVPN (Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana).  For true Neapolitan pizza, there are rules.  Feel free to review them here https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/en/ricetta_pizza_napoletana. 

Can you make good pizza following numerous other methods.  Absolutely.  I made some fantastic pizza's on the KK.  I just needed to adjust the hydration level of the dough to the oven I was using.  However, would they be considered true Neapolitan pizza...nope.  Would they be considered some damn fine pizza...yep!  

On more fun notes, George, damn fine purchase and fine looking pizzas.  Enjoy the journey and share more pictures of the new oven and new pizzas.  

[Syzygies]

I did not mean to imply that you were displaying "poor intellectual form" by using these numbers in passing. You clearly have mastered making pizza with your equipment. Rather, we would be encouraging it in others to let these numbers stand unqualified. Most people who blindly reach these temperatures with their equipment will incinerate their pizza. The people I know with wood-fired pizza ovens back off somewhat from these numbers, even though they can go higher than a KK.

I am sorry.

I was focusing all of my diplomacy on avoiding the claim that Italians are lying.

My teacher (proudly from the Mezzogiorno) stopped just short of this assertion, also. We all delude ourselves. Her measurements indicated a widespread phenomenon that the temperatures Italians claimed to be reaching were not the temperatures that they were actually reaching.

Neapolitan pizza may be like Olympic-grade ski boots. Many avid amateur skiers get it into their heads that this is what they want. This is another idea trap; they don't deliver the best recreational experience, even for the strongest recreational skiers. Choose one's goals wisely.

One can eat spectacular pizza in many parts of Italy. The Neapolitan approach is the hardest to translate to a backyard elsewhere in the world. Their ovens are typically larger than you'll find in any backyard, and scale is critical. Official Neapolitan standards specify the numbers you give, and some Neapolitan pizzerias have mastered achieving these numbers. But even at a randomly chosen "great" pizzeria in Naples, don't bet half your retirement savings that these are the numbers they're actually realizing. They're in a tight feedback loop, observing what comes out of their particular oven, and the line out the door matters more than adherence to some abstract standard. This is how it should be; this is what we should replicate in our backyards. The French have grammar police, just as the Italians have pizza police, but the French don't speak as theory claims, either.

How and where do you measure? Like a KK, the dome temperature tells us little about the experience of the pizza on the stone. An infrared thermometer is most reliable when aimed at previously calibrated reference object that is not reflecting radiant heat from the fire. That's pretty hard to accomplish in a wood-fired pizza oven. Measuring 900 degrees is not necessarily achieving 900 degrees.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Syzygies