Recommend a pizza/baking stone (or tiles?)

Cafe Society
1

I want to make thin, crispy crust pizza at home so I’ve decided to invest in some sort of pizza stone/baking stone/baking tiles and a peel. I’m willing to shell out some bucks for this project if I need to but if I can get by without spending a lot, I’ll do that. I want a quality stone that isn’t going to crack. Pizza may be the only thing I ever use it for but I want to recreate the crust I get at my favorite pizza place which is thin and crispy with those air bubbles in it. I’m not sure what I should be looking for.

My oven is about 15" x 22". Should I spring for a rectangular one or are the round ones just as good?

This 14 x 16 stone at Sur La Table is $30. It looks the same as the $30 one at Crate & Barrel , which is possibly the same as this one.

This FibraMent stone comes in a 15 x 20 for $60. Pricey but might be worth it?

And there’s an AWMCO stone that seems similar to the FibraMent.

Or I could get six 6 x 6 tiles here for $28.

I don’t want to spend a fortune on a peel but want one that does its job. Anybody know of a good one? Wood? Metal?

If you have any recipes for this type of crust I’ll take those, too.

2

On second glance, the FibraMent is the same as AWMCO.

3

We’ve started using a cast iron pizza pan. It seems to work really well. It’s 14"

http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/prdSell.asp?ProdGroupID=24256&DeptID=1328&CatID=17490
-Lil

4

I’m looking for a baking stone, too, and did a bit of research, though haven’t made a purchase yet.

Cook’s Illustrated tested baking stones in their July 2003 issue and found them all to basically work about the same, so their review then centered around price and usability. The Fibrament stone received a low rating because of its cost, size, and heft (19 lbs.), but I’m not entirely convinced of Cook’s assessment: 1) on one hand, I’m thinking that the greater the thermal mass, the better will be the stone’s ability to even out temperature swings in the oven and better simulate a real hearth oven, at least in theory, but 2) on the other hand, if they all work the same, why put up with the extra weight? 3) Then again, if you leave it in the oven all the time (which some people recommend), then why does it matter?

If money, size, weight, are not concerns, you can splurge on a HearthKit, which, from all I’ve heard, works pretty great. Less expensive options include using unglazed quarry tiles (mentioned very briefly in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible). The unglazed part is important, but evidently they’re pretty cheap from flooring stores, especially if you can get remnants. I’ve also read (but can’t remember where) that firebricks, available from home improvement centers, will work.

As for round vs. rectangular, once again Cook’s found them to work similarly well, though my own inclination (along the lines of point 1 above) is to find the largest one that’ll fit in your oven and still leave a 1"-2" gap between it and the oven’s walls for air circulation.

But I don’t have first-hand experience with any of these yet, sorry.

5

We’ve got our oven lined with unglazed floor tiles, and it works wonderfully for pizzas and breads. (It’ll burn the everlovin’ snot out of stuff that cooks long and slow like a cheesecake, but that’s a whole 'nother culinary issue.) We like the tiles because they’re easy to pull out if we need to, they do as well or better than the baking stone we used to have, and by putting a layer on each rack, we get the full-on hearth effect. Also, if something drips all over them and they start smoking when the oven heats up, or I drop one and break it, it’s no big deal. We’ll just nip down to Lowe’s and spring another fifty cents or so another one.

6

Thanks for the advice. I looked on ATK’s web site but they didn’t have the reviews of baking stones up there. Nice to know what they said.

If the tiles are that cheap I think I’ll start with those and see how they work. When I buy them, do I just ask for “unglazed floor tiles” to use for baking and they’ll know what I need or should I go prepared to go into more detail than that? If so, what do I need to tell them?

7

I’ve had a lot of problems with pizza stones & tiles breaking in the oven. Granted, this was 10+ years ago, and maybe the commercial ones are better now.

I first went with unglazed tiles because they were cheap. Couldn’t even get one pizza done on them, because they’d shatter in the oven.

Bought a thin stone, same thing. It just shattered after 3-4 uses.

Now I have THICK - about an inch - pizza stones. I’d say if you were getting tile to look for the thicker ones as well. Maybe others have had good luck with thin ones, but I never did.

8

Near as I can tell, they’re just plain, ordinary unglazed ceramic flooring tiles, about a half-inch thick and six inches square. The first ones were whitish, but now he’s got some terracotta ones in there. Just tell them you need some unglazed ceramic tiles (don’t mention cooking, it tends to confuse them), and they’ll set you up.

One word of warning, though: you MUST put them into a cold oven and let them warm gradually as the oven heats up. Sharp temperature swings, like trying to put them into a warm oven, will make them break. Also, it will take your oven much, much longer to preheat than you’re used to and the tiles will stay real frickin’ hot for a couple of hours after you use them, so if you need to bake other stuff around the same time plan accordingly.

9

I have a fairly unpretentious (and probably cheap) circular baking stone maybe 1/4" thick this last Christmas and it’s worked just fine for me. Usage probably counts for a lot, so heed the word of CrazyCatLady!!!