Pizza stones? Tips please

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I have today cooked myself my first homemade pizza and apart from the
fact i used wholemeal flour (which turned out quite nice) and it was
baked on a rectangular baking tray i have to say they turned out very
nice.

Anyway, I would like to invest in a pizza stone so first of all what is
the best type - marbel or granite (dont know if granite is the most
common but it we have many qranite quarries here in Scotland)?

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

Cheers

Treat it like cast iron. Rinse it, don't wash it with soap. The dirtier it
gets, the better it works!

(Sheldon, leave that one alone!)

kili

On Wed 28 Dec 2005 02:46:58p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it ?

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I have today cooked myself my first homemade pizza and apart from the
fact i used wholemeal flour (which turned out quite nice) and it was
baked on a rectangular baking tray i have to say they turned out very
nice.

Anyway, I would like to invest in a pizza stone so first of all what is
the best type - marbel or granite (dont know if granite is the most
common but it we have many qranite quarries here in Scotland)?

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

Most baking stones are not marble or granite, but made of a ceramic
material. Some people actually use quarry tiles (meant for flooring).

Unless you get a severely burnt on stain or a gooey spill, the best way to
clean a baking stone is to simple scrape any residue off. If you have a
self-cleaning oven, it can be successfully cleaned by putting through a
cleaning cycle.

--
Wayne Boatwright *¿*
__________________________________________________________________
And if we enter a room full of manure, may we believe in the pony.

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I have today cooked myself my first homemade pizza and apart from the
fact i used wholemeal flour (which turned out quite nice) and it was
baked on a rectangular baking tray i have to say they turned out very
nice.

Anyway, I would like to invest in a pizza stone so first of all what is
the best type - marbel or granite (dont know if granite is the most
common but it we have many qranite quarries here in Scotland)?

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

Cheers

Tried many over the years and the best has been a pizza stone from
Walmart, less than $10. Plenty big, cheap and easy to replace if it
breaks. Rarely do I clean it and if I do I just wipe it down or scrape
with a spatula. As far as baking pizza I almost always use parchment
pater, easy and cheap and works great.

[email hidden] wrote in news:1135806418.906095.216290
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I have today cooked myself my first homemade pizza and apart from the
fact i used wholemeal flour (which turned out quite nice) and it was
baked on a rectangular baking tray i have to say they turned out very
nice.

Anyway, I would like to invest in a pizza stone so first of all what is
the best type - marbel or granite (dont know if granite is the most
common but it we have many qranite quarries here in Scotland)?

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

Cheers

Measure your oven, goto a home center, buy an unglazed floor tile large
enough to fit in your oven. This will be much cheaper than those things
labelled as a pizza stone and will work the same. If your oven has a hard
time cooking things evenly, leave it in full time. My oven was horrible,
now it is a dream with a $5 floor tile. Cleaning, never had to clean
mine.

Another tip for making a good pizza is to set your oven to its highest
setting usually 500 and leave it there for an 1/2 to 1 hour to fully
preheat the oven, then bake the pizza. This allows the heat to fully soak
into the oven and when you place a cold pizza in the oven it will recover
quicker. Shoving it in after the light goes out indicating it has reached
temperature is not the way to preheat an oven for pizza.

This site says 1 hr which is what I do.

http://www.pizzatherapy.com/tipsand.htm

Naysayers may disagree with the amount of preheat time. Try it for
yourself and report on your results.

--
---
Charles Quinn

"Choosing the lesser of two evils, is still choosing evil" - Jerry Garcia

Charles Quinn said:

[email hidden] wrote in news:1135806418.906095.216290
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I have today cooked myself my first homemade pizza and apart from the
fact i used wholemeal flour (which turned out quite nice) and it was
baked on a rectangular baking tray i have to say they turned out very
nice.

Anyway, I would like to invest in a pizza stone so first of all what is
the best type - marbel or granite (dont know if granite is the most
common but it we have many qranite quarries here in Scotland)?

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

Cheers

Measure your oven, goto a home center, buy an unglazed floor tile large
enough to fit in your oven. This will be much cheaper than those things
labelled as a pizza stone and will work the same. If your oven has a hard
time cooking things evenly, leave it in full time. My oven was horrible,
now it is a dream with a $5 floor tile. Cleaning, never had to clean
mine.

Another tip for making a good pizza is to set your oven to its highest
setting usually 500 and leave it there for an 1/2 to 1 hour to fully
preheat the oven, then bake the pizza. This allows the heat to fully soak
into the oven and when you place a cold pizza in the oven it will recover
quicker. Shoving it in after the light goes out indicating it has reached
temperature is not the way to preheat an oven for pizza.

This site says 1 hr which is what I do.

http://www.pizzatherapy.com/tipsand.htm

Naysayers may disagree with the amount of preheat time. Try it for
yourself and report on your results.

--
---
Charles Quinn

"Choosing the lesser of two evils, is still choosing evil" - Jerry Garcia

Absolutely positively the most important element to successful use of a
pizza stone is to run the oven as hot as it will go, 500 degrees or 550
degrees is even better. It's still not as hot as a "real" pizza oven,
but it's hot enough for the stone to work properly.

I think a great many people buy a pizza stone and then are afraid to run
the oven hot enough. Running the oven at 350 will give you a truly
pathetic result and probably also cause the pizza to stick. At 500
degrees + the pizza will never stick since it's crusted the instant it
touches the stone. You get a wonderfully crisp properly cooked crust.

I personally use a "multi-bake" technique where I brush the crust with
olive oil and put it in the oven for a few minutes to pre-bake, then
pull it out, sauce and top it and then back in the oven a few more
minutes to melt the cheese. The olive oil pre-bake crisps and seals the
crust so it doesn't absorb the sauce and get soggy.

Pete C.

"Pete C." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Absolutely positively the most important element to successful use of a
pizza stone is to run the oven as hot as it will go, 500 degrees or 550
degrees is even better. It's still not as hot as a "real" pizza oven,
but it's hot enough for the stone to work properly.

And let the stone heat for a good amount of time too. The thicker the
stone, the more mass to heat so wait al east 15 to 20 minutes.

Quoted message said:

I personally use a "multi-bake" technique where I brush the crust with
olive oil and put it in the oven for a few minutes to pre-bake, then
pull it out, sauce and top it and then back in the oven a few more
minutes to melt the cheese. The olive oil pre-bake crisps and seals the
crust so it doesn't absorb the sauce and get soggy.

Pete C.

I do a 'multi-bake' this way. I put all all toppings on the pizza except
cheese. I bake it for a few minutes, pull it out and put the cheese on, then
bake some more.
Dee Dee

On Wed 28 Dec 2005 09:36:22p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it Edwin
Pawlowski?

Quoted message said:

"Pete C." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Absolutely positively the most important element to successful use of a
pizza stone is to run the oven as hot as it will go, 500 degrees or 550
degrees is even better. It's still not as hot as a "real" pizza oven,
but it's hot enough for the stone to work properly.

And let the stone heat for a good amount of time too. The thicker the
stone, the more mass to heat so wait al east 15 to 20 minutes.

You can force the temperature higher in some ovens by using the broiler
setting after initially preheating the oven, since some ovens have a higher
cut-off temperature for broiling. It's rarely documented in the manual.

--
Wayne Boatwright *¿*
__________________________________________________________________
And if we enter a room full of manure, may we believe in the pony.

Your pizza stone should be HEFTY and HEAVY. You heat it up for one hour at
550F before your pizza goes on it.
You NEVER take it out of the oven and wash it. In fact, water never touches
it. Scrape it off when it needs scraping, and that's it.
I have had my late brother's pizza stone on the lower oven rack for 25 years
and everything is fine, particularly the pizza.
Before plunging away at a gourmet store for yuppies, you might check a local
restaurant supply house. That where we always buy our pizza paddles, the
same ones that pizza houses buy.
Kent
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi,

I have today cooked myself my first homemade pizza and apart from the
fact i used wholemeal flour (which turned out quite nice) and it was
baked on a rectangular baking tray i have to say they turned out very
nice.

Anyway, I would like to invest in a pizza stone so first of all what is
the best type - marbel or granite (dont know if granite is the most
common but it we have many qranite quarries here in Scotland)?

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

Cheers

Kent said:

Your pizza stone should be HEFTY and HEAVY. You heat it up for one hour at
550F before your pizza goes on it.
You NEVER take it out of the oven and wash it. In fact, water never touches
it. Scrape it off when it needs scraping, and that's it.
I have had my late brother's pizza stone on the lower oven rack for 25 years
and everything is fine, particularly the pizza.
Before plunging away at a gourmet store for yuppies, you might check a local
restaurant supply house. That where we always buy our pizza paddles, the
same ones that pizza houses buy.

Twenty five years and you still refer to a peel as a paddle... and you
have the audacity to be giving baking advice and poke fun at others who
likely know far more than you?

Sheldon said:

Kent said:

Your pizza stone should be HEFTY and HEAVY. You heat it up for one hour at
550F before your pizza goes on it.
You NEVER take it out of the oven and wash it. In fact, water never touches
it. Scrape it off when it needs scraping, and that's it.
I have had my late brother's pizza stone on the lower oven rack for 25 years
and everything is fine, particularly the pizza.
Before plunging away at a gourmet store for yuppies, you might check a local
restaurant supply house. That where we always buy our pizza paddles, the
same ones that pizza houses buy.

Twenty five years and you still refer to a peel as a paddle... and you
have the audacity to be giving baking advice and poke fun at others who
likely know far more than you?

Well 'PADDLE' you both for picking the nits!!

Wayne Boatwright said:

On Wed 28 Dec 2005 09:36:22p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it Edwin
Pawlowski?

Quoted message said:

"Pete C." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Absolutely positively the most important element to successful use of a
pizza stone is to run the oven as hot as it will go, 500 degrees or 550
degrees is even better. It's still not as hot as a "real" pizza oven,
but it's hot enough for the stone to work properly.

And let the stone heat for a good amount of time too. The thicker the
stone, the more mass to heat so wait al east 15 to 20 minutes.

You can force the temperature higher in some ovens by using the broiler
setting after initially preheating the oven, since some ovens have a higher
cut-off temperature for broiling. It's rarely documented in the manual.

Honest. A good home made pizza doesn't need a blast furnace -
probably because the door doesn't open as many times as a commercial
oven does. I can do mine (size equivalent of an extra large) in about
8 minutes at 475°.
--

Practice safe eating. Always use condiments.

"Edwin Pawlowski" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Pete C." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Absolutely positively the most important element to successful use of a
pizza stone is to run the oven as hot as it will go, 500 degrees or 550
degrees is even better. It's still not as hot as a "real" pizza oven,
but it's hot enough for the stone to work properly.

And let the stone heat for a good amount of time too. The thicker the
stone, the more mass to heat so wait al east 15 to 20 minutes.

We made pizza tonight. I let my stone heat 1 hour at 550. Each time the
element comes on, it bakes the stone even hotter, eventually getting the
stone as hot and hotter than the inside of oven temperature. Don't take my
word for it, check the bread groups and google. I got this information from
the scientific breadmaker experts.

I have two stones, one on top and one on bottom. If you want to turn on the
broiler element, that's a good idea, too because this premise works for two
stones as well.
Dee Dee

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

The best tip of all -- use your oven cleaner; comes out brand-spankin' new.
Dee Dee

Never, ever, clean your stone; it will turn dark in time, but it is
supposed to do that. Be sure to preheat your stone for at least 30 to
40 minutes before placing the pizza on it; I preheat mine for 45 minutes
to an hour. Carol

Our life may not always be the party we would have chosen, but while we
are here, we may as well dance!

"Dee Randall" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Also, how is a stone supposed to be cleaned? I have read some articles
and it seems a bit of a chore. Any tips?

The best tip of all -- use your oven cleaner; comes out brand-spankin'
new.
Dee Dee

Yikes, my sentence could be interpreted incorrectly.
Turn you oven on to the oven-cleaner cycle, is what I mean.
Dee Dee

Carol Garbo said:

Never, ever, clean your stone; it will turn dark in time, but it is
supposed to do that. Be sure to preheat your stone for at least 30 to

40 minutes before placing the pizza on it; I preheat mine for 45
minutes
to an hour. Carol

Our life may not always be the party we would have chosen, but while
we
are here, we may as well dance!

I have never used a pizza stone and i wonder how my pizza pan with its
corrugated bottom compares? I hesitate to purchase a stone as it is
only used for that purpose, i can use my pizza pan for various things
besides pizza, have not done so yet, but at least theoretically i
could.
---
JL

sf said:

Wayne Boatwright said:

On Wed 28 Dec 2005 09:36:22p, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it Edwin
Pawlowski?

Quoted message said:

"Pete C." <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

> Absolutely positively the most important element to successful use of a
> pizza stone is to run the oven as hot as it will go, 500 degrees or 550
> degrees is even better. It's still not as hot as a "real" pizza oven,
> but it's hot enough for the stone to work properly.

And let the stone heat for a good amount of time too. The thicker the
stone, the more mass to heat so wait al east 15 to 20 minutes.

You can force the temperature higher in some ovens by using the broiler
setting after initially preheating the oven, since some ovens have a higher
cut-off temperature for broiling. It's rarely documented in the manual.

Honest. A good home made pizza doesn't need a blast furnace -
probably because the door doesn't open as many times as a commercial
oven does. I can do mine (size equivalent of an extra large) in about
8 minutes at 475°.
--

Practice safe eating. Always use condiments.

Wrong, absolutely wrong. A commercial pizza oven needs a higher BTU
output so that it is able to maintain proper temperature with all the
door openings, but it still has to maintain a proper temperature which
is generally over 600 degrees. At 475 you're just barely hot enough for
a pizza stone to work acceptably, but you will get better results
running the oven full bore.

Pete C.

Joseph Littleshoes said:

Carol Garbo said:

Never, ever, clean your stone; it will turn dark in time, but it is
supposed to do that. Be sure to preheat your stone for at least 30 to

40 minutes before placing the pizza on it; I preheat mine for 45
minutes
to an hour. Carol

Our life may not always be the party we would have chosen, but while
we
are here, we may as well dance!

I have never used a pizza stone and i wonder how my pizza pan with its
corrugated bottom compares? I hesitate to purchase a stone as it is
only used for that purpose, i can use my pizza pan for various things
besides pizza, have not done so yet, but at least theoretically i
could.
---
JL

"Pizza" stones are useful for more than just for pizza. For one, just
keeping it in the oven on the bottom rack will help stabilize the oven
temperature for anything you are cooking and provides a shield from
direct radiant heat of the element. The "pizza" stone can also be used
for many types of breads.

Pete C.