BBQ pizza stone virgin – give me your top tips

This seems a cheaper option than an Ooni so have bought one. The BBQ has a closing top so should work ok. Hints and tips and favourite toppings please.

The raw to ash transition is way to fast to make this easy

Asking about toppings is like asking whips and supermans prior to your just jump session

Or maybe i was unlucky

This is what I do. Seemed easier and cheaper to get a stone for the existing BBQ than a pizza oven.

Tips. A decent amount of charcoal for a long, hot burn if everyone is going for 2 pizzas + a cooked pudding.  Strong flour and dough made and proved well in advance. We use passatta for the sauce and pre-grated mozzarella for ease. Topping – cured ham, peppers, mushrooms, basil, red onion, more onion, sweetcorn for kids, think that’s it.. anything really.

If you have a smaller travel BBQ get a stone for that too as camping pizzas taste even better than home ones.

My tip would be don’t, save the extra for a pizza oven. Based on trying to get a Weber to heat the stone to a suitable temperature. Never managed it, gave up got pizza oven and it’s so much easier.

presuming it’s a weber style charcoal bbq make sure when you lift the lid it goes straight up and down to keep the heat in. also give the stone a minute or two in between pizzas to let it heat up again

Id get a bbq pizza oven if it fits. Like this

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8924119

They work well and when up to temp, cook in 10mins, so not bad.

Put toppings on base once the base is on the pizza paddle else you may have trouble scooping it up. Flour the paddle first.

The Pizza stone in my Ooni can get to north of 450C (measured using a laser thermometer) using a mixture of “pizza oven mini logs” and charcoal (not briquettes).  Your Weber will struggle to get anywhere near that.

Less is more with regards to toppings.

I got a whole oven for £60 in Morrisons last “summer”

You need lots of heat all-round. The stone needs to be seriously hot, and there needs to be radiant heat coming down from the top too. The only way I’ve found to make it work is to load it up with charcoal in a cardboard starter (paint can sized cardboard tube) , then as soon as the  chacoal is going at it’s hottest, throw in some softwood kindling to get flames that’ll reach round the stone.  The problem is the lack of mass in a sheet metal oven means keeping it at 350C+ for more than 10 minutes is really difficult, I’m wondering if I could add some refractory or insulate it in a fire blanket.

Both pizza and toppings to be as thin as possible. A smear of tomato and small chunks of mozzarella. If you try and cover it then you just end up with soggy dough that sticks to the stone.