Home Open Fire Pizza Maker

Writen by Peter Boston

The world's very best pizza is made in wood-fired, open flame, brick pizza ovens. These ovens get much hotter than your home stove ever will, and hotter than the regular steel pizza ovens you see in most pizza shops. Not many restaurants have these special open-flame ovens but if you are eating out and have a pizza that is so good it knocks your socks off be sure to ask the cook about his oven.

If not many restaurants have these ovens then you can be sure that the number of homes that can cook a pizza the right way can probably be counted on your hand. Well, that has all changed. A company called Villaware has come out with something it calls the PizzaGrill BBQ Pizza Maker.

The Pizza Maker consists of a metal enclosure, a clay pizza stone, and a thermometer. The pizza maker is on short legs so the whole device, with your soon to-die-for pizza, can be placed on the grate of a gas or charcoal grill.

Outdoor grills, whether fired by charcoal or gas, can achieve some significantly high temperatures. You would be lucky if your kitchen oven could hold 500 degrees F. These babies can get to 600 or 700 degrees F. If you have something that retains heat well (like a clay pizza stone) in the open flame you can get a cooking surface one or two hundred degrees hotter than that.

The manufacturer is not recommending it but I think the way to go is to level four or five inches of charcoal and place the oven on top when the cauldron is glowing bright red. You do not need a top enclosure like a regular oven because the pizza will cook from the bottom, through the crust, just like it does in a brick pizza oven.

Super high cooking heat is exactly what you need to emulate a brick oven pizza. The pizza stone will provide the heat to crisp the crust, probably in less than 10 minutes, and the heat from the coals or the flame will melt the cheese and cook the toppings.

The final result is going to be the best pizza you may have ever eaten. Be sure to prepare two or three different kinds of pizza, in addition to that big sausage pizza, in advance because you want to take advantage of the heat while you can. And do not be surprised when the kids in the neighborhood start calling you Chef Dominoe.

(c) 2006 by Peter Boston. Get the facts, info, and tips you need satisfy your every desire for the most popular kitchen gadgets. Shop for kitchen cutlery too.