Traditional Pizza Stones

I go through a stone every couple years-they eventually crack and break from being jostled around in the oven and kitchen. This is my first rectangular one, and I like it a lot better than the round ones. It gives a little extra room to work, and fits nicely on my oven rack. I broke an oven glass with a round stone when it worked its way forward and banged into the glass when I closed the oven. I have used this stone so far for pizza and bread, and both turned out well. As with all stones, it needs some time to get hot- I usually leave it in the oven for an hour or so before baking anything on it. I also never clean the stone, just scrape off any burned residue with a metal spatula. Other than that, no maintenance at all. The stone was shipped in enough packing peanuts to protect a small space shuttle, and arrived safely. Thank goodness I opened it outside-I'd much rather have the peanuts blow around my yard than my house. OK, as promised- my pizza dough recipe. I use a Kitchenaide mixer, although I have kneaded this dough by hand many times- no big deal. Just remember when you knead dough, you want to get air into the dough, so keep folding in over onto itself. In a large bowl or mixer: 1.5 cups warm water 1 package dry yeast 1 tsp olive oil 1/2 tsp salt (or less-stimulates the yeast) 1/2 tsp brown sugar (or less- just enough to get the yeast awake) 1 heaping tablespoon gluten 4 cups Caputo "00" flour Start with the warm water, and add in the salt, sugar, olive oil and yeast. Mix for a minute or so on high speed, and then let sit for about 10 minutes. This allows the yeast to "bloom". Next add 1 cup of flour and the gluten. Allow to mix for a few minutes- until the mixture is alive with air bubbles and smooth. Begin adding the rest of the flour, slowly while mixing. I don't really measure flour, I just keep adding it until the dough comes together. I like to leave the dough a little soft and sticky- it makes a better crust. Let the dough knead for five minutes or so, and then turn into an oiled bowl. Let rise for an hour or so. Break off a ball of dough about the size of a softball and place on a floured surface. Since I like to keep the dough soft, you can't really toss it in the air like the pizza places- I just roll it out with a rolling pin. Depending on how soft and sticky your dough is, you will need to sprinkle flour on both sides of it as your roll. After you have it rolled out, fold a 1/2 inch or so lip around the edge over to make a crust. Place the rolled dough on a peel sprinkled with corn meal to keep it from sticking, and brush the top with olive oil. Put whatever toppings you desire on, and slide into the oven on the stone. I don't put anything on the stone. Sliding the dough from the peel to the stone can take a little practice, but is easy after you get the hang of it. Make sure the pizza slides on the peel before you attempt to place it in the oven- gently work a spatula under any sticking areas. Cook for about 5-10 minutes at the hottest temp your oven has. Bake time depends on the dough and your oven. If you are adding mozzarella, wait until the dough is just about done before adding it. I typically remove the pizza from the oven to add the cheese- this way you can keep the door closed so the oven does not cool down. Enjoy. FYI- Gluten is available online and in some stores. It gives the pizza that chewy "east-coast" texture craved by serious pizza connoisseurs. This will make about 4 pizzas, but just increase the amount of water you start with to increase the recipe yield. You can double (or more) this recipe without adding any more sugar, salt, or oil. You can substitute regular flour for the "00" flour, but the "00" flour is fantastic-try it at least once. It is available from Amazon and many Italian food stores. Mange!

I bought this stone over 2 1/2 years ago, put it in the bottom of my oven, and left it there ever since, only removing it when doing the oven's self-cleaning cycles. It fit perfectly in my oven, even though it is convection and therefore is a bit shallower than a standard oven to allow space for the fan in the back wall. In all that time, it has never cracked. It is the right shape for an oven, and almost any pizza will fit on it just fine. (I did find some monster-sized pizzas from Target that hang over the edge a little bit, but they still work.) To use it, I heat the oven up to 500 degrees. Still a couple hundred degrees shy of a professional pizza oven (which reach over 700 degrees), but the highest temperature a standard oven will allow. I wait another ten to fifteen minutes or so after it reaches temperature to ensure that the stone is as hot as it is going to get, then slide the pizza on using a wooden peel that I bought separately. Ten minutes later, I slip it off the stone using the peel, and it is ready! This works with premade refrigerated pizzas, frozen pizzas, and homemade pizzas. It makes a great crust, which is never soggy regardless of topping overload, and is always crisp on the bottom. Alton Brown is a great source of information, so I have no doubt that his advice of getting an unglazed tile for this purpose will certainly work. However, rest assured that this is not a tile being resold at a high markup as a pizza surface. It has feet molded into the bottom to hold it off the surface, is a better shape and size for the oven cavity, and was manufactured for use with food, rather than being stacked on a pile of construction supplies. It is thick, but is engineered to withstand the kind of thermal stresses I've been subjecting it to for years without cracking. Sure, it is more expensive than a tile, but the cost is still low, and it really lasts. Makes great pizza, too! So, make your own choice about whether to use a tile or not, but keep in mind that the comments about the tiles being so much better seem to be coming only from people who don't own this stone. I don't see any comments like "I bought this and wish I had a cheap tile instead."

I love this rectangular pizza stone which fits perfectly in my Weber Genesis gas grill. It is made in the U.S. of thick lead-free clay and hasn't cracked yet. It is worth every bit of the price. Prior to buying this stone, I used a Pampered Chef pizza stone I received as a gift and it cracked the first time I used it on the grill. This was after heating it the recommended way starting from a cold grill and slowly bringing the temperature up to 550 degrees. It was a clean crack so I lined up the pieces and used it again, but it cracked some more. After that experience, I ordered the Old Stone pizza stone which was recommended by America's Test Kitchen. This stone was substantially thicker and heavier than the other stone and hasn't cracked yet even though I use it several times a week for pizza. It makes all varieties of homemade pizza that is so crisp, delicious and inexpensive that I haven't bought pizza out since making my own. I like the fact that this stone is made in the U.S. out of safe materials. It has discolored in spots due to pizza topping drips, but this hasn't affected the performance or the taste of the pizzas. Clean up is easy, I scrape off any residue with a metal scraper right into the grill which will burn off when the grill is on. When fully cooled, I occasionally rinse the stone with water and a steel scrubby (no soap!) and let completely air dry before using again. Since the stone is thicker, it may take a little longer in the grill to heat up, but I find that after about 15 minutes when the temperature is over 500 degrees, the stone is ready to cook on. This stone really delivers brick oven pizza right at home. I will not go back to store bought pizza ever.

The first time I received my baking stone, it stunk (not straight out of the box, but once it was heating). I have no idea why. I knew that a few people complained about a smell from some of the reviews, but no useful info about the cause. I followed the directions to rinse it off with only water and let it dry completely before use. There weren't any noticable defects when I got it. It was packaged well. I was excited to use it! Then, when heating it up for the first time, the odor came. I'm not sure if I'd describe it as a chemical smell, but it didn't smell delicious at all. It did make delicious pizza, though, even if I paid for it with a smelly apartment. A couple of days later I heat up the oven with it still inside and started noticing the telltale stink wafting from the kitchen again. Nope. No thanks. I took it out and laid it on top of a bunch of towels (while it was still around ~250 degrees), then decided to ask an Amazon rep about my options. The guy was really nice and offered either a refund or an exchange. I opted for the latter since I really wanted to like the thing, and although my second stone looked almost exactly the same as my first.... It smells like nothing! Great! Why did it smell in the first place? No idea. But now I'm happy.

Here to buy a replacement for the previous one I bought in 2005! What finally did it in was a friend turning my oven to convection (I always use bake) and then setting it to 550º (I usually only do 425º). All the oils from 20+ years leaked through the bottom center (see first picture); kind of weird to me but it is what happened. Since the oven was so hot, the oils were burning as they leaked out. So 20+ years of awesome service (see second picture) and I wasn't intended to get another one any time soon. Works exactly how you want it to do so. It is heavy; not a complaint in my book. I did not leave it in the oven like the other reviews; we have a baking sheet cabinet. Scrape clean with the long pizza cutter and a quick wash with little to no soap every time.

Santa gave this to our house this past Christmas and it was an impulsive move by old Saint Nick. TBH, I wasn't sure how it would work out. Well, it's great! Here are highlights: Full disclosure: I worked for years at an East Coast mom 'n pop pizzeria and I know good pizza. I have my own dough recipe. I also have made bread for decades, and a good stone can make *all* of the difference. Surface: seems crazy, but I had a stone before that stuff just stuck to. No matter how much cornmeal or flour, it was like superglue. In my stone in my kamado style grill, it is split in two--again which can cause sticking or complexity. This product works really well. Seems nonstick in comparison. Surprises: there are little "feet" on the bottom (see photo) and I placed this right in the bottom of my gas oven. None of my prior stones ever had this, and it allowed me to get it extra hot, which led to a perfectly crispy crust! Hooray! Thickness: the stone is a bit thicker than most others on the market, and some that I have owned. Again, this is a good thing, as that mass helps translate into a crispy crust. It is all about the crust. Shape: I now greatly prefer the square to the round shape. It is so much nicer to have a more full cooking surface available to use. You loose square inches in the round shaped ones. Seriously. This extra space is important for rolls, multiple small loaves, sicilian style pizza, and the like. Even things that go on still in a *rectangular pan* that you may wish to get high heat from below, perhaps focaccia as an example. Value: This stone was *amazingly* priced at Amazon in comparison to the bricks and mortar options that I looked at. I'm glad I got it here. (Note: unbiased and uncompensated). Potential cons: it is heavier than most of the stones I have owned. I point it out as it may be an issue for some, depending upon abilities. Again, however, you truly want this mass for heat dissipation for your crust. Unboxing: it came packed extremely well by the manufacturer, with custom plastic foam (not styrofoam) and heavyweight cardboard. It is clear that a lot of thought went into this to ensure that it will arrive in one piece. That is appreciated. The cardboard went right into recycling. A suggestion for the manufacturer: I wish that plastic foam had markings or a symbol on it so it could have gone into our commingled bin instead of the trash. Happy baking!

I bought this stone to replace a beloved pizza stone that broke after many years of use. I use a pizza stone multiple times a week and since my previous pizza stone didn't have any brand marking I started to research pizza stones. I chose this particular stone after finding promising reviews and I thought it was a safe bet. I couldn't have been more wrong. After receiving the Old Stone Oven Rectangular Pizza Stone on 1/5/2020, I cleaned it and put it in the oven to get it ready for use. I moved it to the lowest rack in the oven and preheated it to 450°. The house filled with a smokey, stinging, chemical smell that forced me to open all of the windows and doors in my house (in the middle of winter) and run outside until the smoke/smell cleared. It left my eyes and nasal passages burning. Ok, new stone... new material... it must just need to burn off. I did this a few more times (450°, 480°, 500°) to heat out whatever was on/in the stone. That seemed to do the trick and the smoke and smell seemed to go away. I used the stone a few times a week for about a month. I know my way around a pizza stone and was never happy with the performance of this stone. But, I know that it's mostly trial and error to get the right combination of time and temperature, so I figured I just hadn't hit the sweet spot, yet. Last night (2/21), I preheated the stone to 480° (same temperature I had used the last few times), put our little homemade pizzas on the stone and waited for the 8 minute timer to go off. I heard the little ding, opened the oven and was hit full force with that same smokey, stinging, chemical smell again. My eyes, nose and throat started to burn. I immediately turned off the oven, turned on the fan, opened the windows and doors and took my family outside (still winter). It continued to smoke. After a few minutes of watching my house fill up with that foul smelling smoke, I realized that waiting for it to cool off was not an option. I ran back inside, grabbed my oven mitts, opened the oven, grabbed the smoking stone, and tossed it out the front door into the snow. It is the next day, my house still smells like burned chemicals, my eyes, nose and throat still burn and I am starting my search for a new pizza stone. Do not buy this stone.

Just put it in oven and get it up to 500 degrees and homemade pizza or bread or just use your imagination, I love mine

I just received my Old Stone Pizza Stone! What a joy. It arrived in perfect condition! I have been turning out the most beautiful bread with it! It is easy to use and it has no offensive odour, and it doesn't stain easily either. It worked well with a layer of Parchment paper or with Loaf pans. The bread comes out with a deeper browned crust... and so beautifully baked. I really am pleased with results this Stone is giving me. Just a note, and I could be wrong, but I found that with a pan of water and the stone it confuses the computer if you are using True Convection. I think that the Stone sets up its own convection because the result is the same either with convection (without the stone) or the stone. Takes the same amount of time and the result seems tastier, more finished with the Stone. Alternately, I wonder if I had the stone too high in the oven and it split the oven in two! The moment I put the bread on straight bake, the oven settled down and indicated the correct temperature, within seconds. In any case, the Stone gives you lots of room for Batardi, for Boules and for loaf pans and a nice big Pizza. Just don't put anything greasy on it. So if your product has any quantity of oil put it on a Parchment paper or use a pan. And heat your Stone up with the oven, don't put it in a hot oven cold, and don't try to cool it down in sink water, and above all don't use dish soap on it. Treat like the worker it is and it will serve you well and kiss your bread to goodness. It is great investment for your baking, you'll be pleased! Old Stone Oven 14-Inch by 16-Inch Baking Stone

Funciona de maravilla para pizza y pan! Compré dos y caben justo en el mismo nivel de mi honro de convección (horno profesional). Mi única recomendación es que lean bien el manual de uso, hay un proceso que hacer antes de usarlo por primera vez y tienen que dejarlo precalentar un buen tiempo.

Una maravilla porque llega a temperatura tan alta, que nunca se me pega el pan, no se necesita papel encerado.

Have purchase 2, one for myself and one for my mother, Arrived in one piece, comes with a good set of instructions on use and care. Followed instructions and put it use. Had a stone before so was not new to it, but had only used it camping never in the kitchen oven. This one just fits front to back with about 3" on each side to allow air/heat movement, we have the convection fan in our oven so we lose about 3" in depth, have not used the fan with the stone so have no idea how that would work. This is a nice heavy stone and things are coming out just fantastic. Had a couple of slip ups and didn' t put enough flour on the peel/ bottom of the dough stuck and burned to the stone, no worries though just scraped it wired brushed it and washed with straight water, it is back in service and working great. Picked up a couple of artisan and pizza/flatbread books and having alot of fun, also gaining on the belt line, they are so much better than what you can buy and a lot you can't buy. Enjoying a lot of different taste experiences and loving it, way more fun than flopping stuff in a pan, feel like I'm really an artist creating something this way.

Excellent condition