Originally Posted by
dgaddis
Cool, I'll try again. I think my issue is not putting the fire at the back of the grill, the stone (sitting right over top of the coals) gets too hot relative to the air above it. So if I leave it on long enough to cook the toppings the bottom is burnt so bad it turns to charcoal. I only use lump, and can easily peg the thermometer but my stone temp is too high, the first time I used it I hit over 900*F! I wonder if a deflector on the normal grill rack (which sits below the Pizza kettle insert) could help keep the stone from getting too hot.
Ideally, I think 900*F air flowing above a ~600*F stone would work great. A real wood fired brick pizza oven works more like that, you're heating the air in the oven which heats the floor, but you're not heating the floor directly.
Pics from the first time using it. Plenty of lump, plus some wood chunks. I had my steel on the rack above the stone trying to keep the heat over the toppings. It worked LOL. The temp reading was after the flames died down, I knew that was way too hot.