I've worked my way up to baking four pizzas at a time over the last twenty years. So in my dual 30" convection Therms I have three mismatched 14" x 16" pizza stones from different manufacturers, all fairly thick but not the same, and my fourth most recent purchase was the same size baking steel to try that out for comparison. And for the most part, they all pretty much do the same great job with slight time variants that you can account for with your eyeballs. My first eighteen or so years I was all about the corn meal for moving the pizzas off of the peels and onto the stones. Then I bought one of the aluminum peels and the cornmeal flat out didn't work - the dough stuck no matter how much corn meal I used. And you know - corn meal on the 500 degree stone eventually talks to your smoke detectors. Out of necessity I tried parchment instead - and it works brilliantly! I've completely switched after all these years. Allows me to pre-prep four pizzas on parchment, (there is no risk of sticking to the peel while making the others), the pizza cooks right on the stone through the parchment, and after four or five minutes I'll slide the aluminum peel under each and slip out the parchment to extra crisp the crust. I keep the parchment aside and use that under each pizza when I slice it to absorb dripping/steam and keep the crust crisp. I preheat the oven and stones to 500 or 525 for at least 30 minutes before the first batch, and my pizza is super thin crust, about 6-8 minutes baking. Oh, and the parchment also works to get pizza and flat bread transferred over and started on the grill - directly on the grates. That stuff is magic, not just for cookies.

Karenseb and practigal, good points. So prior to the Kamado Joe we went through a half dozen gas and traditional Weber type grills. I wanted the grilling area out away from the house due to those reasons y'all brought up. But DH made a point that he did all the grilling while I mostly did the eating and he should at least be sheltered when grilling all the stuff I usually requested. So then we moved the grilling area to our back covered porch, the roof out there is like 12 ft up so I figured it would be fine. In months the ceiling was a mess. Next we moved the grilling area to the garage and hubby would wheel grill out into driveway to use it. This took care of the messy ceiling but didn't help during inclement weather. So finally I bought him the KJ. We brought it home and it was so freaking heavy we could only get it to the tiny covered front porch before we gave up and decided to leave it there until the boys came home and could help us move it around to the garage. I decided that since it was my brilliant idea then I would have to deal with it sooting up my front porch and would clean it and get over it. It has been there for 2 years and nary a spot of grease or soot. Here is a pic to show the tiny area it lives now and how clean the walls and ceiling are. The little bench is moved as hubby is replacing the railings so had to move it. I still can't believe a) how fabulous everything tastes that gets cooked on it and b) how little smoke or grease it produces. pics

My husband has decided on only getting the Green Egg and using it as a grill. According to him it's suppose to be the greatest invention ever! Yeah, we still have another grill hanging around, but the Egg is the only one we ever use any more. I think we're going to gift the charcoal grill to our daughter and new son-in-law. They're pretty much starting from nothing, so they'll appreciate it. Annette, I like your set-up. We're planning on something fairly similar. We intend to add a second, smaller Big Green Egg later. This'll allow us to use the smaller one when we want to cook just for us two, and when we have guests we can use the smaller one for an appetizer and the larger one for an entree. We also want a smaller one so we can take it camping. "If you want to cook on a covered porch, you must use a strong vent hood." ... i agree. Been there, done that. Won't do it again. Wondering how we're having such different experiences ... here's what I suspect: My covered porch, which works FINE with a no-hood grill is set up like the one on the left -- covered porch is attached to the house /is open to the air on three sides and gets a pretty good breeze. My porch is about 6' above ground level /steps on both ends -- could that make a difference? I wonder if people who are having a different experience have a porch more like the one to the right -- an "indented" porch? Or at least a porch that in some way gets less breeze.

We have the Ooni oven in Cathedral City, and so we only use it when we are there. When we are there (usually for about four weeks at a time), we make pizza twice a week. I do all the prep work and my brother cooks it. We are using the round pizza turning peel, but we also discovered that we need spinners as well, but they are inexpensive. We use the turning peel for the first turn and then use the spinners, as in this video that we made: (You can notice our Texas accents in this video.) The spinners will not work for the first spin, as the pizza will not be firm enough and would distort if you use the spinners too soon. The turning peel is too slow to use after the first turn because the pizza cooks in seconds, and the heat is concentrated in one back corner - thus the need for constant spinning. Here's a photo of a cover I made for the oven using Sunbrella fabric: We get sandstorms in Cathedral City, and so this helps protect the oven. I will add that I tend to make 12" to 13" diameter pizzas and make a batch of dough for two pizzas ad a time. Between the two of us, we eat 1-1/2 pizzas and so have half of a pizza left over, which is fine, and we usually eat that the next morning.