Bakerstone Pizza Oven Box

[Winchester]

Rick and I were at Lowes tonight and I'm just walking along minding my own business. And suddenly the Bakerstone Pizza Oven Box jumped right out at me! It's a pizza box that you put on top of the grates on your gas grill. Supposedly it helps to get the temperature up to 600-700 degrees, which is really good for pizza. The interior is stone, so once it gets hot, they say you can bake a pizza in about 4-6 minutes. It even comes with a metal pizza peel for help in getting the pizza in and out of the oven.

I have a long wooden peel that I use in the kitchen, but the metal peel would be nice for the grill.

I was on Home Depot and Amazon, but Lowes is the only place that has the metal peel with the oven box. I read quite a few reviews and people seem to really like the pizza oven box.

(I need to stay out of Lowes. That thing is calling to me. Have I mentioned how much we love pizza around here?)

 

[Mystikal kitten]

That sounds like a very good investment. I'm going to have to look it up.

 

[sivyaleah]

I had a regular pizza stone some years back. I used to keep i in the oven all the time. Crusts came out much better on it. It did eventually crack, but it took years of use. Sounds like a great kitchen addition to me

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Let us know what you think after you test it out please!

 

[raysmyheart]

Wow, pizza on the grille sounds like a food category unto itself! Yum!

 

[Mother Dragon]

Anything for cooking or grilling is a necessity. Go get before they sell out!

 

[Winchester]

I brought money with me to work this morning and am going down during lunch to pick one up.

My pizza stone for our kitchen oven is 30+ years old now. It's a huge thing (it just barely fits into the oven, so that I can close the oven door) and it's got this gorgeous patina from all the pizzas and foccacias it has baked over those years. I've never washed it (because it's porous), but I do wipe it down after we use it. It is just gorgeous. I don't know if anybody is familiar with the old G.C. Murphy's store, before it became Ames; that's where I got it and I think I paid less than $5 for the thing because it was on sale at a really low price. Amazing the stuff you can remember sometimes. But it has well stood the test of time, IMO. It's a really pretty stone.

We do pizza on the grill often in the summer. I make individual pizza shells, stack them between waxed paper and then I set out a big tray of all kinds of toppings. Another tray of cheeses. And a bowl of my own pizza sauce. That way everybody gets to make their own pizza exactly the way they want it. We throw a couple shells on the (very well-oiled) grill grates, bake on one side til you've got these really neat bubbles. Flip the shells over, then fill. Put the grill cover down for a couple minutes, then put the desired cheeses on. Put the grill cover down for a couple seconds, just long enough for the cheeses to melt. This pizza is wonderful stuff and everybody seems to really like it.

So I'm hoping that the pizza box oven would take it up a notch. I'm leery of putting a huge pizza shell on the grill grates; I can just see it sticking somewhere and that would cause all kinds of problems.

We'll see....stay tuned! (And yeah, I'm excited!)

And Rick said last night that it was amazing how we seem to be at the right place at the right time. There we were, buying water softener salt. And there it was. And it just jumped up and down and yelled, "It's pizza, you fools! Buy me!"

 

[AbbysMom]

That sounds very cool! I was at Lowes yesterday but all I bought was edging stones and a big pot of sunflowers. Let us know how it works out.

 

[Mother Dragon]

Darnnit, Winchester! Now you've made the Pizza Hut pizza we had for supper seem like cardboard. I'm a long way from you, but I'll be there if you're trying your new goody out!

 

[Winchester]

Either Friday or Saturday. C'mon up....spend the weekend. We can shop and eat. Pizza.

 

[Winchester]

The oven box is worth it. We made some good pizza tonight.

There's a learning curve (there's always a learning curve!) and I had some trouble getting the pizza off my peel and into the oven, even with using cornmeal. The first pizza, I had the dough too thick; the second pizza was just right. Sausage, onion, mushrooms, and peppers with several kinds of cheeses. I threw together some pizza sauce with a can of crushed tomatoes and seasonings.

We ran out of gas (both tanks are now shot). The first pizza, with the thicker crust, took about 8 minutes. The second pizza was done in about 4 minutes (because we ran out of gas on the second tank).

I had some trouble getting the pizza into the oven with my wooden peel; the pizza wanted to double up on me. Part of that problem is because my wooden peel is way too large for the oven. We got it straightened out. The metal peel that came with the oven had more of a sticking problem than did my own wooden peel. Once we got the pizza into the oven, then we could use the metal peel to move it around without any trouble. While we were waiting for the second pizza to bake, Rick and I were standing out by the pool munching down on the first one.

I'm going to check on a smaller wooden peel. I wouldn't try to go larger than maybe a 12-inch pizza, simply because you need room inside to move the pizza around. My wooden peel is 18 inches wide, way too big for this.

Even Rick said that it was well worth the money. If you like pizza and you have a larger gas grill, I recommend it! We love our pizza, so we are very pleased.

Warning: The oven box gets HOT! Use caution when you're messing around close to the box. Hot, hot, hot.

 

[Mother Dragon]

At last! Yippee! Man, both of those pizzas sound wonderful. I'm glad the oven is working for you. Hurry and get those bottles replaced or you might go into grilling withdrawal.

 

[AbbysMom]

How fun! I'm not sure if my grill is large enough to use one.

 

[Winchester]

You need at least 3 burners for the pizza oven. And you'll need to have all three burners on High to get the box hot enough.

We're getting both tanks filled tonight. I have two $3 coupons for refills and they both expire today.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Boy that sound good! I'm keeping my eye out for end of season sales on gas grills.

 

[Winchester]

We tried the pizza oven box again tonight. Everything went well and the pizza was so good. I spooned on a bit of sauce, some turkey pepperoni, sauteed onions, peppers, and 'shrooms. Topped with shredded mozz and then some grated Parm and finished with some grated Parm Gouda.

I had bought a smaller wooden peel to use to get the pizza into the box. I used more cornmeal than I needed on the peel, but wanted to make sure the pizza would slide right off the peel; I need to experiment more with the amount of cornmeal because it will burn in the oven box. That smaller peel is just the perfect size. Got the pizza in the box, then Rick used the metal peel to move it around inside and then remove it.

One pizza was done in about three minutes. And it was really done, too. The crust was awesome. We made two small pies and both are gone.

You simply cannot get the heat from your oven that you can get with the pizza oven on the grill. This was a good investment for us. We're trying to figure out how we can use it on the grill in the winter.

 

[Mother Dragon]

Oooh, yum! I DO love good pizza! Your description has made the basil chicken I'm making sound positively unappetizing.

Do you suppose you could bake bread in it? Perhaps ciabatta or something flattish? How about a savory pie? Does the box get too hot for those?

What's parm gouda? It sounds divine.

If I short out my keyboard, it's all your fault.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

That just sounds SO good!! How long does it take to heat the box up?

If I short out my keyboard, it's all your fault.

 

[Winchester]

We have it on four burners of the grill; to get the heat into the upper quadrant of the box (up to between 600-800 degrees probably takes about 45 minutes or so. Once it gets to the halfway point, then I'll start making the pizza, stretching the dough out to where I want it, saucing, topping, cheesing, etc. Usually til I'm done, it's up to heat. (It takes a l-o-n-g time to cool back down once you turn the grill off)

No, I don't think it would work for fruit pies and such.....it's simply too hot. You could probably regulate the heat by using certain burners or regulating the heat from the burners, but I don't know that it's worth it. The key thing about this oven box is that it gives you the high, high heat you need to make a good pizza, something you're simply not going to get from your kitchen oven. It might do fairly good focaccia, but again, 400 degrees is about the limit for focaccia, too.

I think it's a single-tasker. But it does make a great pizza. Doing it this way is better than delivery. Seriously.

Parmesan-Gouda cheese can be found at Trader Joe's. You simply grate it the way you would other Parm. (That's where we got it. But you know TJ's; about the time you really get addicted to a cheese, they stop carrying it. To this day, I lament the insanely delicious Fontiago cheese they carried one time. It was a mix of Fontina and Asiago and, oh my gosh, it was decadent. Went back to TJ's to get more and it was gone; they stopped carrying it. I was not amused.)