Broke my pizza stone...!

Resurrected my pizza stone a week ago, made great pizza, and stone was left (passive voice!) leaning against a wall.. it got knocked down, and broke...

I read some use a clay tile as a stone.

Anybody with experience with that?
Other material that would be temp-proof and absorb humidity, like clay does?

brick in the oven works killer
JJ

So, you arrange several bricks on the floor of the oven, to make a 12'x12" or so surface?


If yes, that would take some time to heat up (thermal mass), but the payback could be found in better pizza!

beergears said:

So, you arrange several bricks on the floor of the oven, to make a 12'x12" or so surface?


If yes, that would take some time to heat up (thermal mass), but the payback could be found in better pizza!

Click to expand...

A couple things:

1) Keep the pizza stone in the oven at all times, don't take it out. The stone is going to help all aspects of heat retention in the oven, resulting in even baking for any application. Even when I'm baking a cake, the pizza stone is in the oven.

2) You can definitely use a flooring tile (unglazed, though) as a stone - I do this. I couldn't find one that thick, but it's been working fine. Bricks will work too.

3) Before cooking a pizza on the stone, you should be preheating your oven for around an hour no matter what type of stone is in there - this is pretty common procedure.

Good luck!

PseudoChef said:

3) Before cooking a pizza on the stone, you should be preheating your oven for around an hour no matter what type of stone is in there - this is pretty common procedure.
!

Click to expand...

Thanks 'Chef.

I still do not understand the preheat-forever thing.

Granted, you want the stone and overall oven to be at temp. but why maintain it so long? Wouldn't a modern appliance be good/powerful enough to produce, and keep temp at, say, 450 deg.?

beergears said:

Thanks 'Chef.

I still do not understand the preheat-forever thing.

Granted, you want the stone and overall oven to be at temp. but why maintain it so long? Wouldn't a modern appliance be good/powerful enough to produce, and keep temp at, say, 450 deg.?

Click to expand...

Well, most residential ovens operate in a cyclical fashion. That is, when you turn it on, even to 250° or 550° it just turns on and gets hot. Then, when its sensor tells the oven it has reached that temp, it turns off...so the temperature begins to fall. Once it drops below a designated deviation in the sensor, it turns back on again. Then, this cycle just repeats.

By having the oven preheat for an extended period of time, there will be fewer and fewer fluctuations in temperature when this cycle works during the actual cooking. Therefore, it creates a more even temperature dispersion throughout the entire space of the oven.

beergears said:

So, you arrange several bricks on the floor of the oven, to make a 12'x12" or so surface?


If yes, that would take some time to heat up (thermal mass), but the payback could be found in better pizza!

Click to expand...

yep thats it I also would say to leave it on and in heat up mode longer it will take longer to heat up as Chef has said.

Cheers
and happy pizza cooking... have you ever tried them on the BBQ??? Loads of fun
JJ

Good info guys, thanks!