Hi,

G Wiv has a nice photo looking down into the tandoor at Khan BBQ:



I could see supporting a rack on the charcoal ring, then building a fire on this rack and placing a narrower ceramic insert on top. There would be plenty of air flow from below to nurse the fire and the narrow channel for the tandoor meat cooking effect.

In the box of stuff to give away for charity, I had the heavy metal skewers from the my old oven's rotisserie. What seemed redundant yesterday, now may have a new life and function!

Regards,

A couple of people have PM'ed me to contribute to this thread. I am NOT a professional pizza maker, just an avid home practitioner seeking to make the best Neapolitan-style pies I can. Engineered Ceramics may want to float his ideas over at the forum at http://www.pizzamaking.com where there are many hardcore practitioners of the art who wold be more than happy to provide input.

There are all kinds of pizza styles that are popular and many of those can be made in home ovens and grills with no special equipment. One notable exception is the Neapolitan-style which uses different ingredients and methods. One of the most important is a very quick baking (60-90 seconds) in an environment that blasts the pie with heat from below and above. In my brick oven, the heat from above is radiated down from the dome (>1100F), but also from the embers and flames which shoot up the to the top of the dome and down onto the pie.

The unique composition of the dough and the intense heat create a magical transformation of the texture and taste that is unavailable any other way, IMHO. A Neapolitan pie would not look like the one pictured above which looks to have to cooked too long at too low a temp for a Neapolitan pie (I'm not saying that was the intent).

So the proposed insert may be great for all kinds of breads and pizzas, but it may be a challenge for those who want a Neapolitan-style pie. There are folks who use gas grills or home ovens in the self-clean cycle and other tricks to get up to around 800F on the stone. Colleagues of mine that adopt these approaches admit they would rather be using a proper pizza oven designed for the purpose. Rather than a pizza stone or enclosure for the grill, your company might look into making prefab wood-burning ovens. My very-biased opinion, FWIW.

Bill/SFNM

Bill/SFNM wrote:...The unique composition of the dough and the intense heat create a magical transformation of the texture and taste that is unavailable any other way, IMHO. A Neapolitan pie would not look like the one pictured above which looks to have to cooked too long at too low a temp for a Neapolitan pie (I'm not saying that was the intent).

I agree.

Antonius

The pizza was cooked at an impatient 500ºF
I've made 'pizza' on the grill (sans any stone) and it tastes great - though the crust is of course a bit more bready and dough requires oil…

Anyways, thinking about it more, a top-loading ceramic 'insert' for the grill would be impractical. The reason the tandoor is toploading is that there is a large and easily accessible wall on which to place breads. Also the unbroken circular surface would keep the heat in better possibly – 'cracked' tandoors are supposedly inferior heatwise.

Like JeffB I could best use an 'oven' like your box but round and if possible with a dome top*. If the slab underneath is maybe an inch smaller (radius) than the interior of the box (and similar to your picture) – that would be great. The top grate on the WSM is 17 ½ " (dia) so something maybe an inch smaller in outer dia would be good – with say a 10" to 12" by 6" high opening to insert food in**. I could use the oven without the bottom slab with coals directly underneath (which would be 8" below in my setup) – for 'tandoor' style high heat cooking of meats.


*Based on Bill/SFNM's comment about the domed top reflecting the heat. Could the bottom of a inverted crucible be used?

**Would a removable door or plug for this opening be possible? I guess it would need something to pull out by and would be too hot to handle – I don't think a >600 piece of ceramic needs to be moved around…

Bill - take a look at www.kamado.com for some ceramic cookers. I have one and really enjoy the heating properties. I've made some pretty mean pulled pork, cooked about 24 hours, on one load of lump charcoal.

I also own a ceramic type cooker(www.kamadokomodo.com) are you still looking to manufacture pizza stones? I can get my cooker to 700 plus in a few short minutes and have turned out some great pizzas in about 3 or 4 minutes but my 15" stone is a little too small for my family and I 'm always afraid of cracking the stone-it's only about 5/8ths thick.