The Baker Stone Pizza Oven Box is an assemble-at-home pizza oven for your backyard grill. Despite my misgivings about a box’s photo failing to live up to the hype (note the O’Shea Christmas Tyco Racing Set Debacle of 1973), I sallied forth, followed the directions and put together this unique metal and ceramic oven, intent on enjoying hot, homemade pizzas cooked to perfection on my gas grill.
My plan was to grill two pizzas for me, my wife and daughter to share. The first was a pesto, tomato and buffalo mozzarella number and the second a vodka sauce, shredded mozzarella and pepperoni pizza. I used dough from the supermarket, basil from our garden, tomatoes from a local farm and the cheese and uncured pepperoni from the local Co-op, where seeking cured pepperoni is as frowned upon as is asking, “Where’s the Count Chocula?”
First point of emphasis: ensure your grill, either gas or charcoal, is hot – very hot. The Oven Box needs time to heat up to 500 degrees or more, so when my hungry family milled around the uncooked pizzas, asking, “I mean, how hot does it really need to get? We’re out of pretzels,” I felt pressure to assume the pizza oven was hot enough – it wasn’t. Second point of emphasis: once assembled, the pizza oven is a 16-inch, heavy but easily handled contraption whose written instructions warn, repeatedly, not to let anything other than pizza dough touch the near-molten four-sided pizza stone. This and the less than lava-like oven temperature proved to be my relative undoing.
The Oven Box comes with a wooden pizza blade and a long spatula. I tried placing the pesto pizza into the box, expecting it to slide off with ease. The humidity of the summer night air and the reality that I’d not used enough flour under the dough left me with a traffic jam. I tried to massage the mess into a semi-circle and get the pizza closer to the back of the oven, using the long-armed spatula as the crimson tomatoes sizzled on the stone, their hiss mocking my lame attempts at salvaging dinner. The instructions said each pizza would take 3 to 6 minutes to cook – my first attempt needed closer to 15 minutes, my family gnawing on dish towels, staring out the window in frustrated contempt.
My second attempt improved – the added flour and hotter oven left me with an amoeba-shaped pizza, ready in eight minutes as my wife and daughter gobbled up the results.
My confidence growing, I used the remaining dough and vodka sauce and produced a restaurant-quality pepperoni pizza in no time, the Oven Box living up to its hype.
Check out the Baker Stone Pizza Oven Box for yourself – it’s a creative approach to making homemade pizza.
Just make sure your grill is hot, your dough is floured and your patience is plentiful. As for the pepperoni, I leave the curing question to you.
(The Baker Stone Pizza Oven Box retails for $129.99 and is available at select Sam’s Club, Home Depot, Ace Hardware and Target stores as well as online at bakerstonebox.com. Email Tim at timcoshea@gmail.com)