I've recently purchased a KettlePizza, with the goal of having some pizza parties in the back yard this summer. In my experiments up to now it's been a little bit of a disapointment, mostly because it just can't retain heat. So I've decided to take some of my quary tiles and bolt it to the underside of the lid.

Made a pie, and it tasted better than it looked.

The whole setup still wasn't hot enough though. The pizzakettle temp reader got up to just over 700, the stones were around 550 I think. Too much heat was being lost out the sides, and I think I might have to trim down the tiles in the lid a little bit- I think a couple are causing heat to escape by creating a gap in the lid.

The other thing I want to do is build a new door for the kettle. Right now, it's just too big and too much heat is escaping from it. I've created on door, which covers it completely- but that restricts air flow into it and then it gets cooler inside. boo!

So what I think I need to do is create a door which basically lowers the opening of the kettle, so that there's about an inch gap at the bottom. That way the heat ceiling will be lowered closer to the top of the pizza, and we'll get hot air drawn over it as well, cooking the top of it.

That, and I need to figure out how to plug up the other gaps near the bottom of the kettle.

Onward.