Pizza Is An Ancient Food

In its various incarnations, pizza has been around since ancient Greeks and Romans, from the 1st Century BC. There are no two people who agree on what is the best pizza and what is the "proper" topping.

People around the globe put various things on their pizzas, from tandoori chicken to kangaroo meat. Some make them paper-thin and others thick as bread. But they all agree on one essential feature: pizza has to have a crunchy, crisp crust. For the home-made pizza, that means using a pizza stone.

The Purpose Of A Pizza Stone

Pizza stone has been invented to copy the effects of baking in a wood burning pizza oven, to recreate the evenly distributed high temperature necessary to make that perfect pizza crust. Most pizza stones are made of unglazed terracotta, which not only evenly distributes heat, but it absorbs moisture from the pizza dough, ensuring that delicious crispy crust. They also go well in outdoor pizza ovens.

Care Of The Stone

The porous nature of the pizza stone means that it absorbs flavors it comes in touch with, including unwanted ones like detergents. That means that you should clean your pizza stone only with clean, warm water. Your stone will only get better with time, as it will get slowly seasoned with oils that will inevitable seep into its porous surface. Before placing the pizza on the stone, the cold stone should be put in the cold oven and both should be heated together, until the temperature reaches more than 500 degrees. Once the pizza has been cooked, the stone cookware should be left in the oven until it has been slightly cooled. Don't let cold water to run over hot pizza stone, or it will crack.

Handling The Stone

Keep in mind that the pizza stone is made of clay and that it would crack if it is cooled too fast after baking, or if the cold pizza stone is placed in the hot oven. Also, the temperature the pizza stone reaches is far too high for your normal oven mitts, so make sure that you have heat-resistant gloves. Since the pizza stone has to be heated in the oven before the pizza dough is placed on it, you can prepare pizza out of the oven and place it on the stone with the pizza peel.

Tips For Choosing A Pizza Stone

Your choice of baking stones will mainly depend on the size of your oven and your budget. Keep in mind that some models are very heavy, so avoid them if you will have difficulty handling them. Although the price of various stones varies greatly, the quality and the performance should be fairly similar regardless of the price, whether you chose $9.89 Fox Run Craftsmen 3915 or $209 Dacor ABS20. What you get for the higher price are the design and details and the quality of workmanship.

Enjoy Your Unique Bakeware

The popularity of pizzas all over the world means that people from different cultures are adapting their cooking tools and appliances to making the kind of pizzas they like. But no other kitchen tool comes close to the pizza stone in creating perfectly crispy crust which makes pizza what it is.