What to Look for in a Pizza Stone?

by Santosh Kumar Website Promotion

Is your crust not turning out well just like the pizza available in your nearest pizza parlor? The key here is to get quality of heat to get the crispy pizza crust. Pizzerias use brick oven for even heat distribution. Using pizza stone is the best home alternative. Here, we will discuss how to choose the pizza stone by considering its features –

Pizza Stone vs. Pizza Pan

Pizza stone does more than just distributing heat properly. In fact, it also has porous surface which can absorb moisture well. Metal pan is not going to do this. So, you may end up getting soggy crust when making pizza at home with standard pan.

Also known as baking stone, a pizza stone is made of flat, thick slab of natural or terra-cotta stone. Best pizza stones are just half an inch thick. But it is even better if you choose stone with full inch of thickness.

Glazed vs. Unglazed

There are different natural materials used to make pizza stones, such as firebrick, terra cotta, clay, and marble. In general, unglazed materials are best choice as they can absorb enough of moisture but there are some micro glazed pizza stones and high end stones.

In this process, natural material is capped with a glaze permeated with thin cracks that can absorb excess moisture. But micro-glazing has its pros and cons. The best thing is that pizza stone is pretty simple to clean but you can easily season unglazed stone for best results. However, the problem with micro-glazed baking stone is that they are costly.

Round or Square Shape

There are different professional baking stones available in different shapes and sizes. According to different users, rectangular or square pizza stone is better than round one as these are very versatile stones. With square or rectangular pizza stone, round pizza is easy to bake. It is also easy to bake fresh bread, calzones and other products.

No matter what shape you go for, make sure to choose the stone which is not that large for your gas or oven. Be sure to have enough room to circulate heat across the corners of the stone. It must be a inch smaller, at least, than oven rack or oven floor.

Pricing

These days, pizza stones are enjoying huge popularity. This way, there is no lack of choices out there in different places. In general, you can get well-performing, good sized, natural pizza stone for the best price.

Natural materials are known to be the best. It is one thing you should consider. You can find different types of imitation pizza stones which are nothing but metal pans that are covered to look like stone. They might be just synthetic materials that don’t perform much.

It is especially true as there are some materials which are claimed to be dishwasher safe. Choose materials which are heavy glazed and can naturally avoid or reduce their ability to absorb enough moisture.