I picked this up in March for silly money, figuring I didn't have much to lose. But the weather over here hasn't been conducive to cooking in the garden, so I only just got around to playing with it.
I make no apology for the supermarket kids pizza. This session was to see how well the thing worked, and what temperatures could be achieved. I didn't want to go to the trouble of making dough, only to have to put the pizza in the bin.
The FireBox Pizza Oven sits on the BBQ grate. For this first test, I took both the drip tray and heat shield out of the Traeger. After the fact, I realise that removing the heat shield was a mistake, as the base cooked (and in the first pizza, burned slightly) before the top was browned. My next test will be with the heat shield but still no drip tray. The Firebox has two channels either side of the stone for heat to enter the oven - I reckon the edge of the heat shield will be almost directly under those channels, meaning I can get a better balance between the top and bottom.
Even so, I got surprising results. The first pizza was edible, apart from the burnt quarter - with a decent crispness. I took a couple of bites, and binned the rest, as I wanted to cook another, and didn't want to eat too much.
By the time the second pizza was about to go in, the Firebox was too hot (according to the temp gauge), so I turned the Traeger off, and cooked on what heat the oven had. It also suffered from an under-cooked top, but was actually quite nice, and I had it for my lunch.
(This is the Traeger that is currently hard wired, and is either on, or off, nothing in between.)
The pizza was nothing to boast about, but to get edible results so quickly seems promising.
If it is sunny again tomorrow, I am going to have another go, with the new configuration, again with cheap supermarket pizza. If that works, then I'll do a pizza from scratch next weekend.
