Tonight was one of those nights. I needed to prepare for the summer, for when it's too warm to run the oven at full blast in the house. But I obviously couldn't go the entire summer without making pizza, so it was time to practice pizza on the grill. This can get a little tricky, because I am just not a pizza master yet. A regular oven has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it's highly controllable and convenient. On the negative side, it can only get up to about 500 degrees maximum, and then the kitchen gets really hot. The grill has its own pluses and minuses. It is able to get much hotter, which is a plus, but it's not very well insulated, so once you open the lid, all the heat escapes pretty quickly.
Tonight I decided to build my pizza on this new aluminum screen, which I figured would allow me to get the pizza deployed much quicker. I turned on the grill on full blast with my baking stone in the center, and let it get as hot as possible. (my main issue with the oven is that I can't get the stone as hot as I'd like, so the bottom of the pizza doesn't get fully cooked.)
I took the pizza outside, ready to be cooked.
When I put it on the grill, I made sure to only open the lid a little bit, so the heat wouldn't escape. I was pretty successful in this, but I soon saw a problem. There was tons of smoke that started coming out from the grill. I didn't get any photos, because I was freaking out a little trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Turns out that I forgot to clean the drip tray under the burners, and the crap that was in there ignited from the high heat.
It started covering my beautiful pizza with black smoke (not the good kind of smokiness that bbq-ers covet). I took the pizza out as soon as I could, and turned off the grill.
I was hungry though, so I didn't want to start over, so I turned on the oven and figured What the hell, I'll try to salvage it. It came out ok, it was nice and crispy, but the color left something to be desired. Grey pizza crust is not an attractive trait.
The grill experiment did confirm one thing that I was wondering about though. It was able to retain a high enough air temperature to produce decent spring in the dough. (This is caused by the rapid heating of the dough, which causes the small bubbles from the yeast to expand, leaving bubbles in the fluffy risen crust.)
I was also pretty happy with the crispiness of the crust, but that doesn't have anything to do with the grill or the oven. I think it just dried out too much because of the fact that I cooked it twice. Oh well. Next time will be better. At least it tasted ok! (I'll probably die sooner though, because of the carcinogens in the smoke)
What meals have you fucked up? Were the results edible?
