If you love pizza, you know that it’s difficult to make a pizza at home that tastes as good as one you can buy from your local pizza joint. Their crusts are crisp and light and the cheese is melted just perfectly. But there is a way to turn your homemade pizzas into a pizzeria quality pie and it requires just one simple item.
A pizza stone is simply a large, pizza-shaped stone that you place in the oven while it is preheating. Placing your pizza on it and letting it bake on top of the stone will give you the crisp crust and perfect top that is as good as anything you can get from a restaurant.
The science behind how it works is pretty simple. The stone stores and conducts the heat evenly across the bottom of the crust. That even temperature bakes the crust evenly and the conduction allows the crust to get crispy without burning. The even heat also encourages the consistent cooking of the cheese and toppings, which also leads to a bubbling, perfectly melted pizza top. Your friends and family will swear you bought your homemade pizza and if you want to fool them, that’s up to you.
But as great as pizza stones can be, they are not all equal. As you might imagine, the better quality the stone, the more consistent the material, the more efficiently the stone will do its job. So which stone should you buy?
The cheapest option is to just purchase some generic ceramic tile and use that as a pizza stone. And while it will provide some heat conductivity, these tiles aren’t made for the purpose of baking. So they can crack or break completely while being used. Even worse, they composition isn’t even throughout the tile, so they don’t provide the baking consistency you need.
Generic pizza stones work better and most of them will do a decent job of baking a pizza. But like the generic ceramic tiles, these basic pizza tiles can provide inconsistent results. They are often made of cheaper materials that don’t provide the even heat conduction that creates that perfect crust. And some of the cheaper materials can become brittle over time and begin to crack after frequent use.
One great pizza stone option is made by Cast Elegance, one of the leading pizza stone sellers. Their stones are made from Thermarite, a material that is perfect for the job of evenly conducting heat. It will absorb more moisture from the pizza crust, which helps create that crisp and light restaurant-like crust. This Thermarite stone has been fire treated at a temperature of over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. So this stone won’t crack or break, even when used in the hottest oven or outdoor barbecue.
The Thermarite stone also has a smooth surface that won’t retain stains and doesn’t include any baked-in organic materials. So unlike many other pizza stones, the Cast Elegance stone won’t emit any smells when heated up. The stones are available in several sizes, in both round and rectangular shapes.
So when you want a restaurant-quality pizza at home, you’re going to want to use a pizza stone. And if you want a pizza stone, you won’t find a better one than the ones from Cast Elegance.