As far as product reviews go, I have never used anything better for pizza and bread making than "The Big" (1/2" thick) Baking Steel. Basically, it is a 1/2" thick food grade steel plate that you use in place of your traditional ceramic pizza stone. Their standard size is 1/4" thick, but the 1/2 " size retains so much more heat that it's well worth the extra price tag (http://bakingsteel.com/shop/the-big/).
Some background:
I live in New Jersey. What's basically happened over the last 20-30 or so years is that the increasing rent in New York has forced most of the great pizza places out of the city and into New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island. What this means is that I most likely grew up on pizza better than you can find in the majority of the country. I also lived in France for a time, and saw what a country with a culture based around fresh baked bread is like. I always wanted fresh baked bread in the house, but my bread makers and KitchenAid could make only supermarket bakery caliber bread-certainly not on par with the boulangeries of Provence.
I tried everything to make pizza. In the oven, on the grill, cracking the oven door, pre-baking the crust, etc. I used no-knead, quick crusts, and store bought dough. I even bought dough from the same great local pizza places. Nothing worked. I cracked 2 stones over the years and never came close to a pizza as good as the place up the road that sells a 18" large cheese for $12. The best I was ever able to come up with was something comparable to a good fast food pizza or a good frozen pizza. That may be fine to some, but I am a bit of a pizza snob and with so much good pizza readily available I just about resigned myself to the fact that I just would never make better pizza than what I could find locally.
Months after I had given up, I was looking into no-knead bread recipes a-la the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day method. I was on http://www.seriouseats.com/ and saw several related posts about this amazing new Baking Steel. He's making bread on it, pizza, even using it to sear steaks. If you're not familiar, the site is a great resource, and backs up it's statements with science like this site. Anyway, the bottom line is this:
I make bakery caliber bread, and the best pizza I've ever eaten in my home oven. I don't use the grill because the thing weighs 30 lbs and for bread I usually dump a cup of water right onto the bottom of the oven for humidity. My oven heats to 550 and the steel never gets much above 450, but it RETAINS it. When making pizza, I preheat the steel for about an hour on the highest rung that will allow clearance, then switch to broil when I start to turn out the dough and top it. The method is explained in much better detail by Kenji on seriouseats than I can do it justice. Perfect thin crust, and the top finishes exactly at the same time as the crust. I am an admittedly weak baker, but am still able to consistently turn out finished products like the below pics. I use either the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day Master Recipe (http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/20...basics-updated) for bread more often than not, and a simple google search will come back with numerous no-knead pizza dough recipes, all of which I've had good success.
Anyway, here are some pics (camera stinks and it looks like I took them all sideways):
Edit: ugh I had a typo in the header of my very first post
Some background:
I live in New Jersey. What's basically happened over the last 20-30 or so years is that the increasing rent in New York has forced most of the great pizza places out of the city and into New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island. What this means is that I most likely grew up on pizza better than you can find in the majority of the country. I also lived in France for a time, and saw what a country with a culture based around fresh baked bread is like. I always wanted fresh baked bread in the house, but my bread makers and KitchenAid could make only supermarket bakery caliber bread-certainly not on par with the boulangeries of Provence.
I tried everything to make pizza. In the oven, on the grill, cracking the oven door, pre-baking the crust, etc. I used no-knead, quick crusts, and store bought dough. I even bought dough from the same great local pizza places. Nothing worked. I cracked 2 stones over the years and never came close to a pizza as good as the place up the road that sells a 18" large cheese for $12. The best I was ever able to come up with was something comparable to a good fast food pizza or a good frozen pizza. That may be fine to some, but I am a bit of a pizza snob and with so much good pizza readily available I just about resigned myself to the fact that I just would never make better pizza than what I could find locally.
Months after I had given up, I was looking into no-knead bread recipes a-la the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day method. I was on http://www.seriouseats.com/ and saw several related posts about this amazing new Baking Steel. He's making bread on it, pizza, even using it to sear steaks. If you're not familiar, the site is a great resource, and backs up it's statements with science like this site. Anyway, the bottom line is this:
I make bakery caliber bread, and the best pizza I've ever eaten in my home oven. I don't use the grill because the thing weighs 30 lbs and for bread I usually dump a cup of water right onto the bottom of the oven for humidity. My oven heats to 550 and the steel never gets much above 450, but it RETAINS it. When making pizza, I preheat the steel for about an hour on the highest rung that will allow clearance, then switch to broil when I start to turn out the dough and top it. The method is explained in much better detail by Kenji on seriouseats than I can do it justice. Perfect thin crust, and the top finishes exactly at the same time as the crust. I am an admittedly weak baker, but am still able to consistently turn out finished products like the below pics. I use either the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day Master Recipe (http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/20...basics-updated) for bread more often than not, and a simple google search will come back with numerous no-knead pizza dough recipes, all of which I've had good success.
Anyway, here are some pics (camera stinks and it looks like I took them all sideways):
Edit: ugh I had a typo in the header of my very first post
Comment