There isn’t much better than a freshly baked pizza from your own oven. The way the cheese bubbles just as it comes out, the steam still rising The tomato sauce fragrant and piping hot, filling your senses as you cut into it with your favourite pizza cutter. But getting it right requires more than just an oven. You need a pizza stone at least to even get close to what you get at your favourite take-out joint.
Pizza stones are absolutely worth it, more affordable than steels and easy to work with. If you clean them properly and are careful not to drop them, they’ll also last you a long time. The only real downside is that they’re a bit unwieldy, lugging one around your kitchen is no one’s favourite task. However, the results they provide far outweigh the hassle.
In this article, we’ll go through some of the best pizza stones on the market and explain why they are considered as such.
Top 5 Pizza Stones
Here are the five pizza stones, out of the ones I sampled, that worked as advertised, if not better.
Fibrament-D Pizza Stone
There aren’t many pizza stones out there that advertise the fact that you can do more than just cook pizza on them – after all, why would you want to? But the Fibrament-D was a pleasant surprise.
Not only did it produce excellent, crisp pizza that was never overdone, it was great for other things as well. Stones don’t conduct heat as quickly as steels do, so I managed to bake some cookies on it without even coming close to burning them. It should also help season the stone for a while, meaning I’ll have a little buttery fragrance in future pizzas.
As usual, the instructions state that you should always avoid coming into contact with water, but other than that I had few problems with it. You can even have it customly cut to fit your specific oven.
Pizzacraft Thermabond Pizza Stone
The Pizzacraft is a great stone if you need it right away, no time to season. It has a heat transfer pattern on one of its sides that helps the air circulate evenly around the stone, and I certainly noticed the difference it made.
The pizza came out much more evenly cooked than on most stones, which was a pleasant surprise. It’s safe in temperatures as high as 900 degrees, though I can’t imagine using it at such heat.
Solido 14” X 16” Cordierite Pizza Stone
A personal favourite of the stones listed here (and the one in my own home), the Solido makes a pizza both chewy, crispy and springy.
Cordierite releases heat differently than other materials – slowly. It takes nearly two hours to preheat them, but this also means it’s great for baking bread as well, which of course helps with the seasoning.
It’s a fairly basic design, just a rectangular slab, but the fact that I’ve found it useful for both pizza and bread proves that some standard designs are all you need.
Leifheit Pizza Stone Square
One of the benefits of a Leifheit is that it’s a terrific stone for beginners. It even includes a peel to help you slide the dough onto the stone, which can take some getting used to, but once you learn how to do it correctly it can be quite addictive.
The accessories that come with the stone are the real attraction here, as there’s nothing particularly special about the way it cooks a pizza. It cooks them just fine, but there’s nothing really remarkable about the way it handles them.
One of the other accessories that’s quite handy for beginners is the wire carrying tray, which is great for those who have trouble setting the stone in the oven.
Nerdchef Steel Stone
Warning: Not for wimps. This stone weighs in at 23 pounds, which is a hassle. But I can’t really say too much negative about it, because it performed amazingly well. Steel is a superconductor, and this steel/stone hybrid certainly cooked my pizza through quickly.
Before I knew it, the pizza crust was browned, the onions caramelized and the cheese melted. It’s not for the weak and it’s not for the uninitiated, as you’ll need to keep a close watch on your pizza to make sure it doesn’t burn. It’s certainly cheaper than a full steel, with some of the added speed benefits.
Just make sure you know how to handle yourself around one.