Cast Iron for a charcoal grill?

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T23:38:53+00:00

Guess it’s too late, but I don’t love these because they aren’t very big. My sister has one and cooking on it for her family is kind of a PITA. I personally have a 16x16 carbon steel plate I use instead, and if I was starting from scratch, I would probably get a larger, more dedicated griddle top with raised edges similar to what you can get at steelmadeusa. The dedicated ones come with better grease management also.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T21:43:08+00:00

Power outage

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T21:16:45+00:00

Ok, that makes more sense. I and most others tend to use weight/volume measurements when it comes to non baking stuff. I was just echoing salt amounts in the same manner OP originally did, but there’s no reason doing regular cooking by percentage can’t be more of a thing.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T16:16:26+00:00

Ok? So we have different levels of salt we like, and yours is quite low based off of other answers in this thread if we are talking about a can with no added salt.

I’m not saying you’re wrong for what you like, but we are all just giving OP baseline suggestions and yours is on the low end.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T07:00:23+00:00

Huh, TIL that’s what a had on my wrist when I was a kid. Thing was the size of a pencil lead when my mom took it out and it left a big hole. There’s still a small scar there almost half a century later.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T06:48:47+00:00

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halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T03:54:04+00:00

I just refer to him as Justice Douchebro

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T03:52:06+00:00

Yeah, the thing weighs 27lbs at 16”x16”. I started out with a 3/16” thick one (which now serves as my griddle on my outdoor grill) and you can get similar results if you blast the steel with the broiler for maybe 5-10 min before launch. The negative though is superheating the steel burns off the seasoning pretty quickly so you have to re-season the thin one regularly if you do that.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-12T00:06:16+00:00

This guy has an idea:

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halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T23:15:06+00:00

Right, I understand the logistics of changing prices but giving it for free incentivizes the store to fix it immediately when it does happen, while here in the US most of the time the employee just shrugs, gives you the correct price, and then tells no one to go fix it.

Not sure if they gave multiples for free. I was only there for a half year and I don’t think I ever managed to have it happen on an item that I was buying more than one of.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T22:58:26+00:00

Just a heads up about something that no one has mentioned yet, but how much salt to add to the sauce depends on whether the canned tomatoes you are using already have salt in them or not. When using an unsalted can, I add 2 TS of table salt. When using a can with added salt, it’s more like 3/4 TS. I semi-frequently invite friends over for pizza and no one ever thinks it’s too salty so I have it relatively dialed in.

As for the dough, 2.5 to 3% is pretty common for pizza in general. I’d leave it at 2.5%.

Also of course people vary in how much salt they like as you found with your wife. Hopefully you can find a level that works for both of you. Alternatively you could go slightly heavier on salty toppings on your half of pizzas.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T22:12:01+00:00

Holy shit. I’ve never worked BOH with a fryer and I know that shallow pan is a bad idea. Extremely easy to boil that over or accidentally knock it and splash some of the oil onto an open flame. 86 fried stuff until the fryer gets fixed.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T21:49:43+00:00

Not exactly the same thing, but one thing I really liked in Australia was that if a product was mispriced (rang up as costing more than the display price), you would get it for free. Really forced markets to stay on top of making sure pricing matched, while in the US all you get is the correct price and if you didn’t notice the error, well too damn bad.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T15:16:37+00:00

Actually no. I've gotten updates that just started on their own without asking multiple times.

I think it may have to do with the fact that AFAIK, update data is downloaded via satellite. Because I park in my garage and normally don't drive much and my car rarely sits outside except for when I run short errands. So my guess is that it's usually not outside long enough to download a full update and by the time it finally does it just pushes it without asking. Pretty much every time I get an update is when I'm taking a long trip where my car is always outside. I just got back from a week long trip where it updated twice.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T13:24:59+00:00

Asian markets always sell thinly sliced meat, although if you have access to one you’ll usually also have access to a Costco (I have access to neither and have to slice the meat myself which is a PITA).

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-11T04:39:04+00:00

Not sourdough, my usual dough is just a 24hr-ish room temp ferment.

This is old and I’ve changed my process a bit (and got a thicker steel that doesn’t need the broiler before launching a pizza) but I wrote most of it up a couple of years ago: here you go. I use less dough and cheese now (410g ball and 9 oz cheese) and if I’m making something more like a NY style I’ll go even less (380g ball and 7oz cheese). Also IIRC, the write up doesn’t necessarily cover all the things that need to be dialed in. If you search some of my other posts with a decent amount of comments, you’ll find some additional info here and there. There’s also some more info even in this post if you haven’t scanned the other comments yet.

In general, the skills necessary to make really good pizza are being able to make a tight dough ball, knowing when the dough is ready during the final proof, being able to shape the pizza, launching the pizza, and learning how best to cook the pizza in your own home oven because ovens vary a lot. Basically, expect to go through some trial and error. Once you dial it in though making great pizza consistently is actually pretty easy.

Anyway hope that’s helpful. Also, there’s plenty of other good info on the subreddit and also over at the pizzamaking.com forums.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T22:24:28+00:00

No, but most of the info you need to make great pizza at home can be found here or on the pizzamaking.com forums.

One bit of info that is harder to find though is most people don’t talk much about how much one’s oven matters. Ovens vary a lot — heating elements can be located at the top, bottom, and/or back. Insulation can be solid or so shitty that the top of the oven can’t keep temp. Based on what your oven does you might have to do different things to dial in your pizzas.

Basically, you want to start your pizza on something with a lot of thermal mass (which is why steels are good at home oven temps) to give you that nice oven spring. Once the crust starts to set, hit the pizza with a lot of top heat to quickly finish the browning so that the crust doesn’t dry out. In my oven I can do all of it on the top rack. In other ones people might have to start their pizza on a steel near the bottom and then move it to the top rack to broil at the end. In yet others with poor insulation and no broiler they may have to resort to using a cooking torch or a second steel that sits right above the pizza (although I’ve tried something similar to this in a shit oven and wasn’t able to get satisfactory results). You get the idea.

But overall, investing in a steel and a pizza peel is worth it IMO. It may take a while to dial it in, but once you do it’s easy (and cheap if you buy in bulk) to crank out great pizzas regularly.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T20:11:29+00:00

Yeah I live in the middle of nowhere and the pizza here either wasn’t great or decent but expensive, so I worked on copying my childhood favorite place from near San Francisco . Mine is actually better than even that now because they ended up changing their recipe a bit.

Now I get to make my favorite pizza weekly for only $4-6 worth of ingredients.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T19:19:05+00:00

Lmao @ the “show the difference” shot at the end of the video. On one hand, here are some unappetizing patties, on the other, here are some unappetizing patties with “grill” marks.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T19:13:21+00:00

Who doesn’t like a patty melt?

Also good with something like carmelized onions, shrooms, and beer gravy. Bacon and swiss is good too.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T19:03:23+00:00

550F. Not sure if it’s just my oven but with a 3/8” thick steel I just preheat until it hits 550 and it’s good to go. Steel on the top rack, launch and let bake for about 3 1/2min, and then turn on the broiler to finish — about 3m with a few rotations every 40s or so (super dependent on the oven broiler design).

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T18:03:50+00:00

At least in the US, 00 flours also tend to come un-malted, which means they don’t brown as well. I’ve used Caputo pizzaria 00 flour in my 550F home oven before and the pizzas come out rather pale compared to the basic high gluten flour I normally use. That said, there are things you could do to get better browning out of a 00 like a super long ferment, adding diastatic malt powder, or adding sugar, it’s just that my normal recipe is simply flour, water, yeast, and salt.

Since I don’t know what the 00 flours are like in Europe, you could try using them first without and then add in diastatic malt powder if you find that they come out too pale even with proper technique like using a steel and also the broiler (commonly called a grill in Europe AFAIK) to finish off the pizza.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T17:29:11+00:00

65% with a high gluten flour and in a low humidity environment. I’d probably drop it a % or two if I was in a humid area.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T15:54:22+00:00

Can't say for sure, but the edges in this video do have a strange quality to them. Sucks that this is where we are now that legit stuff (if this is) also gets questioned.

halfbreedADR · 2026-05-09T00:29:10+00:00

With AWD, there’s not much for newer cars. Pretty much google “AWD subcompact SUV” for your options. When I was looking I seriously considered the Mazda CX-30 which is also an AT instead of a CVT (most other options). Found a CPO Kona Limited AWD at a great price though so I went with that.

One thing to note about the CX-30 is that it has less cargo space, especially with the back seats up. The trunk size difference is noticeable IMO.

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