The Cook’s Kitchen

I just saw there were a couple of posts about making pizza recently, so this post is quite timely. I had always made pizza using a jelly-roll pan or baking sheet. For Christmas, my dear friend bought me a pizza stone and peel. Wow!! I will never ever go back…

The stone goes into the oven cold and they preheat together so that the temperature is completely uniform and transferred to the stone by the time you put the pizza on it. The peel is crucial to actually getting the pizza on and off the stone, so that you’re not messing your oven or floor even more than necessary.

I always had seen the stone as an extravagance, a waste of space, a once in a while tool for an everyday usage kind of girl. But, I’ve changed my mind and am thoroughly twitterpated with my pizza stone. What really blows me away with the pizza stone, is the crispy, crunchiness of the crust. The fewer toppings you have on the pizza top, the crunchier the crust. We discovered this since our pizza was half prosciutto-cheese-mushrooms and half cheese-mushrooms-olives-artichokes. The veggie side was loaded up more, the crust cooked slower on that side and the crust, while crispy, still had more spring in the middle.

The downside, and only one I’ve discovered, is that from the very first usage it gets stained. Even though I made ridges and curved crust and did all the preventive measures recommended by the manuals and pizza stone enthusiast foodie friends, the tomato sauce leaked. The cheese leaked. It stained the stone, it smoked in my oven. I was able to get the foodstuff off during cleaning with baking powder, water and scouring pad, but not every one of the stains. They’re in there, forever. I consider them my benchmarks, the measurements of adventure through the long relationship my pizza stone and I will share.