Cooking with Coal

cokehead wrote:I tried something tonight I've been thinking about for years. I took an old grill from a gas grill and cut it down to 14" X 8 1/4". That is the right size to put inside my Warm Morning 617-A so it will rest on the firebrick front and rear just inside the loading door.

I'm going to do this with my Harman. One of the reason I have a hand fed is for emergency preparedness. This "rack" will great enhance this aspect of the stove. I will keep an eye out for the discarded grills people put at the curb each spring and grab the grill for my use. What a great idea! Lisa

I think my grill inside my stove has limited usefulness. If I need the stove to be cranking out the heat for the house, forget about cooking "inside" the stove. I'm not going to try again until it is warm enough to let the stove idle and the coal level is quite low. It is still worth it to make up a grill but have no illusions of being able to use it any old time.

lowfog01 wrote:

cokehead wrote:I tried something tonight I've been thinking about for years. I took an old grill from a gas grill and cut it down to 14" X 8 1/4". That is the right size to put inside my Warm Morning 617-A so it will rest on the firebrick front and rear just inside the loading door.

I'm going to do this with my Harman. One of the reason I have a hand fed is for emergency preparedness. This "rack" will great enhance this aspect of the stove. I will keep an eye out for the discarded grills people put at the curb each spring and grab the grill for my use. What a great idea! Lisa

Yeah, I could see where it would be a pain but still... the grill could hold things like foil dinners or maybe a small Dutch oven. When we made foil dinners in the stove I was worried the heat would burn right through the foil. The grill would mitigate that a little, maybe. It wouldn’t cost anything to try and may make a difference if I did have to depend on the stove to cook on some day in the future. Thanks again for the idea. Lisa

If you liked the Pepe's in mohegan sun you should try the original down in New Haven its been there forever. My father use to take us there 30 yrs ago when it was a tiny little place and a small line out the door. Also go down the street and try Sally's pizza, a relative of Pepe's, they make an excellent pie and have been there a very long time.

I try to stay out of New Haven but if I have to be down there I would consider it. There is a reason they stayed in business all these years.

chopper698 wrote:If you liked the Pepe's in mohegan sun you should try the original down in New Haven its been there forever. My father use to take us there 30 yrs ago when it was a tiny little place and a small line out the door. Also go down the street and try Sally's pizza, a relative of Pepe's, they make an excellent pie and have been there a very long time.

http://sallysapizza.net/default.aspx

Coal is for heat, the gas grill, smoker, or charcoal is what's for dinner

SMITTY wrote:I think I ate there before .... from what I remember it was the best pizza I ever had!

Ah, now we're talkin'! One thing about going to coal that secretly inspires me is pizza making is a hobby of mine. I have been doing 7 day cold ferment doughs for a year or so. People who try it refuse to eat at local pizza parlors anymore. (No locals do wood or coal fired mind you) My 4 hour real sauce and the crust make it easy to beat the locals. All say "OPEN A SHOP, you'll make a killing!" I use a 3/4" stove in a regular convection oven, preheated at 550 for an hour or so, and 550 is as good as it gets.

BUT, if I were to preheat a firebrick on the stove top as the stove preheated so as not to shock and crack it, then place it atop the coals, and put red coals on top to really heat stone, then push them off to the sides...It's a true pizza oven! Now we're talking true Neapolitan pies that cook in 2 minutes flat and have the lovely leopard char at the bottom.

Yes. pizza making is one of my favorite things, and going to coal will provide much fun and delicious experimentation as time goes on. Here's one of my pies in a regular oven, more heat is what I have always needed for the next level, I think I may have found the more heat part.



My important question on this. If you put these coals on a firebrick to get the brick to say 800 degrees, then remove the coals, is there anything toxic or bad in this coal to be concerned about?

So -- are you writing that you do not need one of those clay dome ovens to make this happen?

I had building one on my bucket list.

cokehead wrote:My wife topped the stove off while I was at work so I can't grill anything tonight.

Think she was trying to tell you something?

Sting wrote:So -- are you writing that you do not need one of those clay dome ovens to make this happen?

I had building one on my bucket list.

No Sting. More asking if anthracite coal is typically used, since my knowledge of coal types goes back 5 days. Also I write to see if anyone here ever tried this in a stove unit as all I saw mentioned was being at places that make coal fired pies in standard ovens, and if it's too poisonous as opposed to say Kingsford, and now add for you if you knew one or some of those answers could you have maybe thrown the info in either before of after the rolled eyes!?

Also thought it might spark up interest with pizza aficionados, this being the cooking section, due to the parallels with high heat/coal stoves/pizza cooking.

There is only one type recommended, as it turns out, for flaming up a pie on.

In the old days, they cooked with bituminous coal. It’s soft and dusty. It was banned for environmental reasons in the 1970s.
...
So you only use anthracite coal, which is shiny, hard, smokeless and has no dust.

http://www.theindependentrestaurateur.com/?p=3110

So know we know that. All that remains in question now is do these stoves retain enough top heat to make the pizza right, so don't throw away the list yet Gordon, ya still might need the dome for just that reason.

I just read a building suggestion in a grilling book from the library (or I would post the link) about a simple way to build a pizza oven using a formidable base of stone - a layer of fire brick - on that place 1/2 of a paper barrel and smear a pile of adobe over that - hole in one end for smoke - wood loading door in the other reducing the opening.

Dat plan - used chunk wood to heat the thing up all day - the wood and ash was shoveled out - holes were stopped up and the roast beast was put inside the 800 degree hole.

Others I have watched were larger - the fire was off on one side and cooking went on on the other - draft kept the smoke hi and away from the cooking floor.

i think it would be a grin

My grill at the farm for the last 15 years has been the diverter valve from an abandoned Fertilizer plant

Ill have to get a pic of that

Lovely refereed to as Jethros' Still because I took maybe an hour one afternoon and nailed a lean-to of "well seasoned" scrap lumber over it for shade

Sting wrote:I just read a building suggestion in a grilling book from the library (or I would post the link) about a simple way to build a pizza oven using a formidable base of stone - a layer of fire brick - on that place 1/2 of a paper barrel and smear a pile of adobe over that - hole in one end for smoke - wood loading door in the other reducing the opening.

Dat plan - used chunk wood to heat the thing up all day - the wood and ash was shoveled out - holes were stopped up and the roast beast was put inside the 800 degree hole.

Others I have watched were larger - the fire was off on one side and cooking went on on the other - draft kept the smoke hi and away from the cooking floor.

i think it would be a grin

Absolutely, a big fun grin, I say do it! Adobe is strong and just great for this. You can also make cool shapes with adobe, sand it, sculpt it, anything. Yeah the hole on top without a stack might be key to pulling or not pulling the smoke away. Basically it's like a wood fired oven, just using coal, I would think. The key to the pizza oven is the low ceiling on an electric shop seen, add the dome in wood or coals case to gather and rid smoke fast. I've looked into it, I can give ya lots of links on making them, I'm just getting interested as coal in a box right here inside he house is screaming out to me "I have 800 degrees, use me!" Of course this is a very seasonal cooking option. We need the adobe oven in the rest of the year.

The roast sounds great!

Have a happy new years eve, enjoy.

http://www.fornobravo.com/

Hey sting.. ive been building one of these for years... actually it got re-scheduled onto a bucket list a few years back...

its another cool forum tho... great folks also...

http://www.fornobravo.com/pizza_oven_ph ... umb37.html

pics...