Pizza on the Camp Chef Smoke Vault
Just recently, one of my YouTube “Cooking Everything Outdoors” show fans asked me if you can bake a pizza on the Camp Chef 18″ Smoke Vault. Honestly, at the time I had no idea. Camp Chef claims that the Smoke Vault can reach 500° F, so that should be hot enough to make a decent pizza and there is nothing better than grilling pizza in my book so I decided to put the question to a test and see if the Smoke Vault could produce a quality grilled pizza. Or smoked pizza if you choose to crank up the smoked pizza taste profile.
My first step was to find a pizza stone that fit my 18″ Smoke Vault (note: if you have the 24 ” model any size stone should fit).
Removing all of the racks but one, I placed my rectangular pizza (12″ x 15″) stone on the remaining rack which resulted in a perfect fit.
I did place the rack on top of the side holders so my pizza stone would sit on the rack and not the holders.
Next I added water to the water tray, then I preheated the Smoke Vault for 15 minutes on the high setting with no chips in the chip tray.
When the Smoke Vault was heated properly I placed my first test pizza on the stone.
Pepperoni for the boys, of course! This was a full 12″ pizza. I should have rolled out a rectangular shaped pizza, oh well!
Pepperoni Pizza browning up nicely after 10 minutes. I decided to rotate the pizza at this time to even out the browning (back to front). Another 5 minutes in the Smoke Vault and it was done. I chose not to add any wood chips on this pizza, not sure how the boys would have liked it.
Next it was time for the Margarita pizza. No chips for the first ten minutes (no reason for the timing, just testing at this point).
Here is a good photo of the Pizza stone placement in the Camp Chef Smoke Vault.
Here the smoke chips have been added to pizza cook at 10 minutes to finish with a smoky taste. I used hickory chips from Two Trees Products “Best of the West” brand.
Margarita pizza cooked in the Camp Chef 18″ Smoke Vault.
After this first round of tests, I will say that the Camp Chef 18″ Smoke Vault can and does cook beautiful pizzas. The crusts were done, the ingredients were cooked through, all in about 15 minutes. My next run will be with full smoke and trying to cook multiple pizzas. As a final note, the boys loved the pepperoni pizza and our Margarita pizza had a subtle smokiness that could only get better.
Have you cooked pizzas in your Smoke Vault? Let me know how you do it!
