What’s the secret to the perfect restaurant-style pizza? The best diy pizza stone crust that holds up to sauce and toppings while still being tender. While it may seem hard to believe that you can achieve the same results as your favorite pie joint, the fact of the matter is, pizza is a fantastic dish to make at home. Luckily, the answer might be an easy fix you haven’t thought of.
Even without a custom wood-fire grill, there’s a way to get a crispy crust at home. Though sticking a piece of stone in your oven might not be your first idea, using a pizza stone is a surefire way to get restaurant-quality pies — as long as you avoid some common pitfalls first-time pizza stone users might face. When it comes to finding the right tool for you, the term “pizza stone” might be misleading. Like hot tiles in the sun, pizza stones hold in heat, making them perfect for getting wonderful browning and even heat distribution. Pizza stones are available from many sources, but make sure you buy from a reputable manufacturer. Your pizza stone should come with instructions on how to best use and care for it, and most manufacturers offer their information online for easy access. From rectangles to circles, brightly colored glazed pieces, or simple slate sheets, there’s a pizza stone that’s perfect for your oven available.
You can try making one yourself. Many home chefs swear by purchasing unglazed clay or porcelain tile from a hardware store and cleaning them thoroughly before usage. While some people swear by oiling stoneware used to bake bread in and follow a similar method to seasoning cast iron, you should never oil a pizza stone. Seasoning, or the process of baking a layer of oil into the surface of a porous material, is commonly used to make cast iron nonstick and to avoid rusting.
If your pizza stone is rusting, that’s a whole new can of worms. Most manufacturers don’t recommend seasoning your stones for this exact reason. While every pizza stone is different, it’s best to follow manufacturer instructions on how best to care for your stone. It’s hard to think of something worse than a stuck or soggy pizza that tears when you go to remove it from the oven. Luckily, using a pizza stone tends to eliminate that problem. While that may sound like an excessive amount of time, it’s worth it. Once the stone reaches such a high temperature, it retains its heat.
That heat allows your pizza to go from raw dough to perfectly browned crust in eight to 10 minutes. By preheating your pizza stone, you also draw out any excess moisture that could turn your crust soggy and eliminate the chances of a thermal shock. When you’re trying to transfer a pizza to a blistering hot pizza stone, it can seem a little daunting. A common trick is building the pizza directly on a sheet of parchment paper and sliding the whole thing, paper and all, into the oven.
It should be fine to use parchment in a pinch or for easy pizza removal, but using flour can help avoid sticking and help you slide your pie in and out of the oven. Simply dust the pizza dough as you stretch it or dust the stone itself. While it may seem counterintuitive to avoid washing your tools in the kitchen, in this case, it’s better to avoid it if you can. Because of the clay used to make stoneware, they’re naturally porous. Never use soap on a stone! Pizza stones can absorb flavors from oils, soap, or even your ingredients. It’s inevitable that things like fatty meats or oily cheeses will naturally fall onto the stone when you’re using it to make pizza, but those can be dealt with by the high heat you use to cook the pizza, and any residual ashes can be wiped off, leaving a clean surface behind.
Don’t worry too much about staining and discoloration, both of which are natural the longer you use the stone. If you’re struggling with a dense doughy crust that never seems to bake properly, it may not be the fault of the stone. You may not be using the right dough for your pie. While deep dish pizzas are delicious, a pizza stone is best suited to a thinner crust that crisps on the outside and stays soft in the center.
For store-bought pizzas, it may seem only natural to use a pizza stone to elevate a lackluster crust, but remember that thermal shock we talked about earlier? You wouldn’t want to put a frozen pizza directly on the stone, as it can rapidly cool down the stone leading to breakage. Either allow your frozen pizza to thaw first, or use a baking sheet instead. If you’re noticing issues with your dough before it’s even been placed in the oven, you could be over-kneading.
Try a recipe for foolproof dough that requires minimal kneading. If you’re finding that your crust burns before your cheese melts or your toppings singe before your dough ever crisps, it could be an issue with your stone’s placement. A pizza stone mimics a professional pizza oven, and to get the best use out of it, it’s all about location, location, location. If you’ve got a broiler at the top of your oven, you’ll want to make sure your pizza is lowered away from the heat.