Pizza for the Scarbelly Family

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s2k9k

AMNPS Test Group
Original poster
Sep 8, 2011
11,324
182
SEUSA
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!
 
Very nice Dave!

The pizzas look fantastic and I'm sure Gary would give you 
2thumbs.gif
 for a job well done! 
 
I just spent quite a bit of time reading that thread about Scarbelly's pizza oven.  Being new here I didn't know him but I learned everything I needed to be able to understand who he was & what all of the people that miss him are all about.  Love the passion he had for his food. I took away a feeling that he just loved being with family/friends & celebrating life.  Here is a quote from his pizza oven build that defined his character. 

"One of my passions is to donate time to making food with some of the chefs supporting Farm to Table and some of the other charities that support food to help disadvantaged - If I can do 5 pizzas in 5 minutes I can crank out a lot of them and 6 -8 loaves of bread at a time can help a lot of people.  I just need to figure out the certification process and I am working on that now. I hope to be able to feed 50 people at a time from my oven"
 
As much as I love Pizza I have never made a Homemade Pizza. Before his passing Gary was helping me to set my home oven up to crank out a max temp to cook pizza in. I had just bought all the items to make my first pizza and he tald me to call him when I got started on it...Never got that pizza made but I will when my mine get right again...and Gary will be right here with me...RIP my friend !
 
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That was a wonderful tribute to our dear friend. I too have not been able to go very long without questioning, " Why the hell did THIS have to happen!?! ", and feel the pain of many here. I thought about doing Pizza but did not have the fixin's so I Smoked about 4Lbs of Boneless Rib Tips that I had accumulated. I did not post because of no Pics, but during the entire preparation and 2 hours smoke I sat in quite contemplation of how I can only hope and strive to be a man that was so giving and as loved and respected as Gary...The words, " I miss him " just doesn't quite cover it...JJ
 
Very nice Dave.

first.gif


I was fortunate to have met Gary & Kathy not long ago in Savannah. We ate at Hueys and did a bunch of talking. Gary is one of them guys who is friends to everyone.

We lost a great guy.
 
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