Do I need a pizza stone, and does it actually work?

The limitation of a domestic oven for pizza is not the air temperature, it is the base. A wood oven's floor is at 400°C and the dough sets and puffs in seconds. Any surface with mass, preheated for long enough, closes part of that gap — and if it has not been preheated for long enough, it closes none of it.

Safety

Step by step

1. Understand what it is doing.It is a thermal battery. A slab of stone or steel sitting in a hot oven for an hour stores a large amount of heat, and when wet dough lands on it that heat moves into the base far faster than it would from air or from a thin tray. The base sets and blisters before the topping has time to make it soggy.
2. Preheat it properly or do not bother.The stone needs to reach the oven's temperature all the way through, not just on the surface. That is 45–60 minutes at maximum heat for stone and 30–45 for steel, on a shelf in the upper third of the oven. Twenty minutes is not enough and is the reason most people conclude the stone does nothing.
3. Choose between stone, steel and cordierite.Ceramic stones are cheap and crack easily. Cordierite handles thermal change much better and is the sensible ceramic choice. Steel conducts far faster than any stone and gives the best base of the three, at the cost of weight — a 6mm steel plate is heavy enough to be awkward — and a much higher price.
4. Get the pizza onto it.Build the pizza on a sheet of baking paper on the back of a tray or a peel, then slide paper and all onto the stone. Semolina or coarse flour on a bare peel works once you are practised, and paper works first time. Pull the paper out after a couple of minutes if you want the base fully exposed.
5. Use the grill for the top.A domestic oven at 250°C cooks the base faster than the top, so the cheese is often pale when the base is done. Two minutes under the oven grill at the end, or the grill element switched on for the last part of the bake if your oven allows it, finishes the top.
6. Use it for more than pizza.The same stored heat improves bread, flatbreads, focaccia and pastry bases. Leaving a stone or steel permanently in the oven also evens out the oven's temperature swings, which is quietly useful for all baking — it just adds to the preheating time for everything.
7. Clean it by burning it off.Never use soap on a porous stone — it absorbs it and you will taste it. Scrape off debris when cold, and run the oven hot to burn off the rest. Staining is permanent and harmless. Steel can be scrubbed, dried and given a wipe of oil like a pan.

Alternatives

• An upturned heavy baking tray, preheated: Free, and gives perhaps a third of the benefit. Preheat it for 20 minutes at maximum and slide the pizza onto the base of it. Thin trays warp.
• A cast iron pan or griddle, preheated: Excellent for one small pizza and better than a thin stone, because cast iron has real mass and conducts well. Limited by its size.
• Frying pan and grill method: Start the pizza in a very hot dry frying pan on the hob until the base sets, then put the whole pan under a hot grill to finish the top. No stone required and the results are surprisingly good.

Questions people ask