The Best Surface for Baking Pizza, Part 5: Baking Stone

Go shopping for a new pizza stone, and you'll find a huge variety of surfaces, from metal to clay to natural stone to man-made composites. If you were going solely by recommendations from respected testers, you might settle on the baking stone sold by King Arthur Flour. I decided to put it to the test.

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21 Comments | Posted by dbcurrie, April 19, 2011 at 10:45 AM
Tagged: baking stones, baking surfaces, pizza baking surfaces, Pizza Protips, pizza stones, The Best Surface for Baking Pizza

Emile Henry's New Rectangular Pizza Stone

You may already know that Emile Henry has a line of round, enameled pizza stones in various colors, but check it out: The ceramic ovenware–maker has just introduced a rectangular stone.

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7 Comments | Posted by Adam Kuban, April 8, 2011 at 4:00 PM
Tagged: baking surfaces, Emile Henry, pizza stones

The Best Surface For Baking Pizza, Part 2: Aluminum Pan

While pizza stones like the one we tested last week are pretty popular, they have their drawbacks: they're bulky, heavy, and a little pricey. How does a cheaper, thinner, lighter aluminum pizza pan compare?

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29 Comments | Posted by dbcurrie, March 29, 2011 at 10:30 AM
Tagged: baking surfaces, equipment, Pizza Protips, pizza stones, The Best Surface for Baking Pizza

The Best Surface for Baking Pizza, Part 1: Cheap Pizza Stone

Over the course of my next few columns, I'll be testing a variety of cooking surfaces to see how they perform. We'll start the testing with a cheap, basic pizza stone that's 13 inches in diameter and less than 1/2 inch tall.

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69 Comments | Posted by dbcurrie, March 22, 2011 at 10:30 AM
Tagged: baking surfaces, equipment, Pizza Protips, pizza stones, The Best Surface for Baking Pizza

Cooking Pizza on a Steel Sheet

Cooking pizza on a metal surface is nothing new to Slice'rs, many of whom already use the Lodge cast iron pizza griddle or do the cast iron skillet hack. But here it gets an endorsement from Nathan Myhrvold and his team of mad culinary scientists in the six-volume mega science-of-cooking collection Modernist Cuisine.

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19 Comments | Posted by Adam Kuban, February 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM
Tagged: Modernist Cuisine, Nathan Myhrvold, pizza stones

The Pizza Lab: Which Rack Should I Put My Stone On?

In his recipe for thin crust pizza from Cook's Illustrated, Andrew Janjigian takes the novel approach of placing the stone on the top rack of the oven. This is totally contradictory to what most pizza authorities recommend: putting the stone on the bottom rack (or even the floor of the oven) in order to maximize the amount of heat it absorbs. So why does this method work?

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46 Comments | Posted by J. Kenji López-Alt, February 11, 2011 at 8:30 AM
Tagged: how-to, Pizza Lab, pizza stones, The Food Lab, The Pizza Lab

Dear Slice: Is There a Good Metal Surface for Cooking Pizza On?

"...The idea I am having now, would be to increase it even more, with a material, the same thickness but with better heat-conducting capabilities, like a metal. Some ideas would be iron, stainless steel, or aluminum, of about an inch thick. But to buy a tile like this, made of one of these metals, can be expensive, and I am not sure if anybody has done that before, and if the idea is just silly. Before investing, I would like to know what is your opinion about that."

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8 Comments | Posted by Adam Kuban, January 3, 2011 at 3:00 PM
Tagged: Dear Slice, Lodge cast iron pizza pan, pizza cooking surfaces, pizza stones

From Serious Eats Talk: Can I Cook Frozen Pizza on My Pizza Stone?

Over on Serious Eats Talk, BananaMonkey asks: For the first time in a decade I'm eating a frozen pizza. The oven is heating now, with pizza stone inside. It just occured to me that tossing the lump of frozen dough of a premade pizza might be too much of a shock fro the stone. Should I not use it?(Don't judge the frozen pizza...my phd dissertation is due in 5 days and I'm moving in 10...something had to give) The result: Yes, you can. BananaMonkey did it, and the stone survived....

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Comments are closed. | Posted by Adam Kuban, May 11, 2010 at 5:00 PM
Tagged: pizza stones, Serious Eats Talk

The Paupered Chef's Guide to $3 Homemade Pizza Stones

It seems there's been a lot of buzz about pizza stones in Serious Eats Talk lately (Aaaargh, Pizza Stone!, Pizza at Home, Using a Pizza Stone, How to Clean a Pizza Stone). My take on pizza stones has always been to pick up a purpose-built one when they're on sale.* Mostly because I get confused at the home centers when I go in to find the appropriate tiles that kitchen-hackers recommend. No more. Blake Royer of The Paupered Chef has some useful tips on finding just the right tiles to get you baking on the cheap — all for...

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23 Comments | Posted by Adam Kuban, February 16, 2010 at 10:30 AM
Tagged: pizza stones, The Paupered Chef

How to Clean a Pizza Stone

If you're going to buy a pizza stone, allow me to recommend a square or rectangular one as opposed to a round one. Rectangular versions give you a little more leeway in placing raw pies on them; round ones require a precision drop. [Photograph: Williams-Sonoma] In Serious Eats Talk tonight, there's a good discussion happening on the best way to clean a dirty pizza stone. Lots of good advice there, but the simplest method comes from foolishpoolish, who's done a lot of home-baking and pizza-making: "A simple half hour to hour under a broiler or on the oven's cleaning...

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8 Comments | Posted by Adam Kuban, January 3, 2010 at 11:30 PM
Tagged: FoolishPoolish, how-tos, pizza stones