Last Updated on June 26, 2023
The Best Pizza Stone for Home Made Pizzas!
Homemade pizza is for you, if you like pizza but don’t enjoy the cost of take out. You can bake great tasting pizza at home by using a pizza baking stone. This one is made in America, too!
Using a Hartstone pizza stone will give you outstanding pizza at home with brick oven taste and a crisp, golden brown crust. It really is one of those “must have” pieces of cookware if you’re into pizzas.
These high-fired, lead free and dishwasher safe stoneware pizza stones distribute heat so that your pizza will bake evenly.
Pizza is popular because it is versatile, satisfying and easy to make. From Italy to the United States, pizza has become a food staple.
Traditionally, pizza was baked in a wood-fired oven and turned during baking for even cooking. The pizza was placed directly on the oven’s brick surface. Pizza stones, such as Hartstone’s stoneware version that we use and love, have been developed to approximate this in our modern home ovens.
Turn the oven to 500 degrees, bake your pizza for about 13 minutes, and get ready to enjoy a hot and tasty pizza at home!
Old Stone Oven Pizza Stones Beat Pizza Pans That Rust and Wear
Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you cook pizza on aluminum pizza pans that after a while you hear them pop suddenly? That’s because after repeated uses, aluminum pizza pans that you find at most stores will warp.
They warp because of uneven temperatures from one end of the pan to the other as it heats. You’ll see the label ‘non warp’ on some pans but even those will warp if the oven temperature is set at a higher range. Heat circulating in your oven is uneven by nature, just use one of our choices for the best meat thermometer and you’ll see for yourself, and a thin metal pan has less ability to even this out.
Stoneware pizza stones like the Pizzacraft pizza stone on the other hand, retain heat and spread it out evenly throughout the piece. The stone can then be a source of even heat to your baking pizza.
Old Stone Pizza Stones don’t have that problem. They won’t rust and they won’t warp in an oven no matter how often you use them.
Pizza Baking Stones and Wood Pizza Peels
You can stretch your pizza crust directly onto the baking stone if you like, or assemble the pizza on another surface and then transfer it to the heated baking stone, already in your oven.
If you want to transfer your pizza to the heated stone, a wooden pizza peel is the traditional method. You may have seen programs where pizzas are baked in large ovens (whether gas fired, or wood burning) using a flat paddle with a long handle. This is a peel. Many bakers will use cornmeal to help keep the dough from sticking to the wood. Especially when cooking artisan pizzas in a brick oven. Be aware that the cornmeal will burn, and it’s best to keep excess brushed away from your pizza.
Many people use wood pizza peels together with a pizza stone. It takes a bit of practice to transfer the unbaked pizza from a peel to a stone. It’s a bit easier once the pizza is baked. You can check out The Food Crowd for some good peel to stone instructions.
The way you make your pizza also figures into whether you will want to use a peel. If you like lots of sauce and/or toppings like dried tomatoes and mushrooms – my personal favorite, then you may wish to assemble your pizza directly onto the stone, and allow some extra baking time, since the stone will need to heat as well as the pizza.
When the pizza is done, you can remove it from the stone using the peel and while the stone cools down safely in the oven, you and your guests can go ahead and enjoy homemade pizza.
Not All Pizza Stone Bricks Are Round – There Are Rectangles, Too!
For many decades now pizzas have been made on pizza stones as a way to enrich their flavors and bring people authentic taste. This same taste was and still is enjoyed in many pizzerias where pizzas were first made famous. But not all pizzas are created round in shape thus the need for rectangle pizza stones.
Rectangle stones are perfect when you want to cut your pizza into squares or rectangles, and will give you a tasty, thin crust when you stretch the dough thin as well. You can find rectangle stones in a variety of sizes and they’re an excellent choice for making pizzas in small squares for class parties or children’s activity groups. It can be easier for the kids to eat these shapes than the pie shape pizza slices.
You can even use a rectangle stone to cook a regular frozen pizza if you don’t have time to whip up a homemade one. Just make sure you put the stone into the oven before you preheat it, so that this type of stone will gradually warm along with your oven.
Cooking Pizza on the Grill With Grill Pizza Stones
If you have an outdoor kitchen or even just a grill, you can find pizza stones to use with the grill. These are perfect to use for outdoor parties or if you have a big crowd of relatives coming over and you need delicious pizza fast.
This pizza will taste just like you cooked them in an oven made of brick with a crispy crust that’ll make people think you’re a master at making pizza. Plus, if you use the wood chips that you can get along with this grill, you’ll get that taste of wood smoke flavoring that will have everyone raving about the meal.
You can even find stones that will work with gas grills.
The best part is that most grill pizza stones are easily switched from outdoor to indoor use in a regular kitchen oven. That means if the weather doesn’t cooperate with your outdoor plans, you move on inside and still get that great stone cooked pizza.