Baking pizza without an oven.

Hi guys. I don't post a lot, but thanks to everyone for a great source of information.

Besides homebrewing, I love making pizza. I recently starter experimenting with cast iron skillets, stones and iron plates. And while results were very good, It was a bit of a PITA to heat my oven for 30+ minutes every time I wanted to make pizza. So, this gave me an idea.

I developed a product, that lets me bake a decent pizza on my glass cooktop (and, in fact, on most other heat sources like gas, induction, grill etc) without using an oven. It's basically an iron skillet with approx. 1/4 inch thick cover. The process is very simple.

You just put the thing on your heat source, cover first, pan on top. Then you go and make your pizza. I have experimented with materials and sizes a lot, so I got everything in the right ratio. In about 5 to 10 minutes (depending on your heat source) the cover gets to around 700 to 750F (400 celsius) and the pan to around 550F (just below 300C).

At that point you just slide in your pizza, cover it and set the timer to 3 to 5 minutes, depending on style, size, toppings etc.

The pan has some other "features" than make sure the dough is cooked properly. The product is still under development (well, ugly ), I am just finishing the final look of it. When I do, I will post some pictures, but for now, here are some results. I would love to get some comments. I am sure there is a ton of little things I haven't thought about.

Those look really good. Never would've thought of something like that. Show some pics of your setup. Interested to try something like this.

There are actually products on the market to "bake" a pizza in a stove top. Another option is to cook it on the stove and then broil the top until browned properly.

Those are some good looking pies. I would be interested in seeing your setup also.

A few years ago we got a pizza maker from a friend, it's basically http://www.amazon.com/Presto-03430-Pizzazz-Plus-Rotating/dp/B00005IBXJ

it works really well. Doesn't heat the house up and you can run the upper element, lower element, or both.

Sure wish I knew how you guys add links with just one word.

Peruvian802 said:

There are actually products on the market to "bake" a pizza in a stove top. Another option is to cook it on the stove and then broil the top until browned properly.

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Hey Peruvian, do you have a link to such product? I was looking for something like that, but didn't find anything.

I have tried those electric pans, but I found them to be useless for pizza.

I will take some photos of my setup. It just need a few more mods before its "public worthy"

NinjaMig21 said:

Hey Peruvian, do you have a link to such product? I was looking for something like that, but didn't find anything.

I have tried those electric pans, but I found them to be useless for pizza.

I will take some photos of my setup. It just need a few more mods before its "public worthy"

Click to expand...

Try this for more info

Thanks. You really think I didn't google the hell out of "stovetop pizza"

There are some methods that let you bake a pizza in cast iron skillet, but they require you to flip the dough, some people even char it with a torch, to get that authentic look

I've also seen those huge "ovens" for the stove. But they are quite expensive, slow and somewhat defeat the point of not using an oven

My setup is much much simpler and faster.

A friend of mine brought a frozen pizza and some aluminum foil backpacking with us once. He wanted to see the look on his brother's face when he pulled a hot pizza out of the "oven" to eat while his brother was eating reconstituted beans or some sht.

It took a few minutes to set it up, but he had a nice pizza baked over a coleman fuel stove.

The next trip his brother brought some pre-cooked bacon, which was VERY new at the time.

We owned a Pizzaz cooker for years. It worked very well. I bought one for my daughter going to college and it broke when it fell out the back of the Durango. Then ours finally gave up the ghost. We haven't replaced it because we don't eat that much frozen stuff anymore and we discovered that the oven actually bakes a superior product, it's just not quite as handy.

I usually cold ferment all my dough for 3 to 4 days, use home made sausage from a local farmer, use veggies grown on my garden etc.

But, I have tried to put frozen pizza in my contraption, and it works really well. You can't expect miracles from a frozen pizza, but it was much better than the one made in the oven. Higher temperatures and shorter cooking times really help the frozen dough to rise a bit and not dry out as much as in the oven.

rekoob said:

Those are some good looking pies. I would be interested in seeing your setup also.

A few years ago we got a pizza maker from a friend, it's basically http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005IBXJ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

it works really well. Doesn't heat the house up and you can run the upper element, lower element, or both.

Sure wish I knew how you guys add links with just one word.

Click to expand...

+eleventy on the pizzaz

Got one to replace the microwave that 'sploded. Love being able to control the upper and lower elements seperatly. Better pizzas than oven or skillet, hard to beat them bbq grill pizzas, tho...

Looks like too yummy!!
Mostly, i make pizza in oven. for this, i have buy wood fired oven. But now i would definitely try this without oven. Thanks for sharing.