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Gear$$$Mid: Roughly $50 to $500, or up to $50/month.Baking Steel

Baking steel

A slab of solid steel that stands in for a pizza stone in a home oven

Half an inch of solid steel, left on an oven rack through the preheat. Steel drives heat into wet dough far faster than ceramic does, so the base sets and chars before the top dries out. That is how home oven pizza usually fails. Bread works well on it too. Across two burners it becomes a griddle. The trade-offs: 15 pounds, and a preheat nearer 45 minutes than 10.

Who backs it

Sorted by strength of stance

  • Chef and food writer · The Food Lab

    Points home bakers at a slab of steel instead of a pizza stone. Higher thermal capacity and better conduction, he says, mean faster bakes, puffier crusts and better-charred bottoms out of an ordinary oven. Copies have piled up over fifteen years and he still tells people to buy the original.

    Source: kenjilopezalt.com: 12 Gifts for Pizza Lovers

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Gear entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.