If you knew Gary you knew he loved pizza, so much that he built a Wood Fired Oven just to cook pizza and other things and he used it often. If you have not seen it, it is beautiful:
If you want to know more about it, here is his build, Gary's WFO.
And here are some of his first pizzas on it.
The news this week has had me really bummed out, I never met Gary in person but we talked a lot. I felt like I had known him all my life. We talked recently about getting together sometime. I really wish I could have made it out there and shared some pizza with him on his WFO, that was like something on my bucket list and now it's been snatched away from me. I really don't understand why but I do believe everything happens for a reason even if we never know what the reason is, but I'm still having a hard time coming to terms with this. I guess it's just going to take time.
When I saw Brian's thread about doing a Memorial Smoke for Gary I thought it was a great idea and I wanted to smoke some wings or maybe a pizza for him and then as the weekend came I found it very hard to get my smoker fired up. Every time I thought about it I just thought about how much I was going to miss Gary and I just didn't want to do it. It hurt too much.
Well I pulled it together today and told myself "I have to do this for Gary, he would want me to". So I decided to go with some smoked homemade pizzas. Now I don't have a WFO so the GOSM would just have to suffice. I have only smoked frozen pizzas before and didn't think a homemade dough would work on the rack but then I remembered my Frogmats, yes that will work! I have a nice pizza stone but it won't fit in my smoker and have made pizzas many times in my oven In fact before I got my smoker I was really getting into homemade pizzas, but the smoker kind of put an end to that, until now. So I mixed up some dough this afternoon and set it aside to rise, ran up to the hardware store to get some propane and came back to start getting everything else ready.
One pizza I just went with my old standby, Pepperoni, Italian Sausage, and Bacon. The other I decided to go with a full on smoked pizza with everything I made myself. Pulled pork and Canadian Bacon (Tasso inspired). Both got topped with Smoked Mozzarella Peacheese and the sauce was a Garlic Alfredo I made up.
I couldn't decide which pellets to use so I thought, "WWGD?" (What would Gary do?) so I went with the Pitmaster's Choice, I know he loved those pellets.
I cranked up the GOSM as hot as I could get it and with the small burner it would only get to about 325* so these took a little over 30 minutes (unlike 5 minutes in Gary's WFO) but it gave them more time to collect some smoke.
I'm not bragging when I say this, I think it was because of all of Gary's inspiration and because of thinking about him so much while I was preparing everything but these were the best pizzas I have ever had. What do they say? Cooking with Love makes everything taste better, or something like that, well I think that's what this was because they were awesome.
Ok Ok here they are:
Pepperoni, Italian Sausage, Bacon with Mozzarella Peacheese:
Pulled Pork, Canadian bacon (Tasso) with Mozzarella Peacheese:
Smoking away:
And done:
I don't think I'll ever eat a slice of pizza again without thinking about Gary, and that is a very good thing!!!
I miss you buddy! Hope we can share a slice sometime in the afterlife, I'll be looking for you!
If you want to know more about it, here is his build, Gary's WFO.
And here are some of his first pizzas on it.
The news this week has had me really bummed out, I never met Gary in person but we talked a lot. I felt like I had known him all my life. We talked recently about getting together sometime. I really wish I could have made it out there and shared some pizza with him on his WFO, that was like something on my bucket list and now it's been snatched away from me. I really don't understand why but I do believe everything happens for a reason even if we never know what the reason is, but I'm still having a hard time coming to terms with this. I guess it's just going to take time.
When I saw Brian's thread about doing a Memorial Smoke for Gary I thought it was a great idea and I wanted to smoke some wings or maybe a pizza for him and then as the weekend came I found it very hard to get my smoker fired up. Every time I thought about it I just thought about how much I was going to miss Gary and I just didn't want to do it. It hurt too much.
Well I pulled it together today and told myself "I have to do this for Gary, he would want me to". So I decided to go with some smoked homemade pizzas. Now I don't have a WFO so the GOSM would just have to suffice. I have only smoked frozen pizzas before and didn't think a homemade dough would work on the rack but then I remembered my Frogmats, yes that will work! I have a nice pizza stone but it won't fit in my smoker and have made pizzas many times in my oven In fact before I got my smoker I was really getting into homemade pizzas, but the smoker kind of put an end to that, until now. So I mixed up some dough this afternoon and set it aside to rise, ran up to the hardware store to get some propane and came back to start getting everything else ready.
One pizza I just went with my old standby, Pepperoni, Italian Sausage, and Bacon. The other I decided to go with a full on smoked pizza with everything I made myself. Pulled pork and Canadian Bacon (Tasso inspired). Both got topped with Smoked Mozzarella Peacheese and the sauce was a Garlic Alfredo I made up.
I couldn't decide which pellets to use so I thought, "WWGD?" (What would Gary do?) so I went with the Pitmaster's Choice, I know he loved those pellets.
I cranked up the GOSM as hot as I could get it and with the small burner it would only get to about 325* so these took a little over 30 minutes (unlike 5 minutes in Gary's WFO) but it gave them more time to collect some smoke.
I'm not bragging when I say this, I think it was because of all of Gary's inspiration and because of thinking about him so much while I was preparing everything but these were the best pizzas I have ever had. What do they say? Cooking with Love makes everything taste better, or something like that, well I think that's what this was because they were awesome.
Ok Ok here they are:
Pepperoni, Italian Sausage, Bacon with Mozzarella Peacheese:
Pulled Pork, Canadian bacon (Tasso) with Mozzarella Peacheese:
Smoking away:
And done:
I don't think I'll ever eat a slice of pizza again without thinking about Gary, and that is a very good thing!!!
I miss you buddy! Hope we can share a slice sometime in the afterlife, I'll be looking for you!