Baking stones are large pieces of stoneware that are designed to help turn your regular oven into an oven that is perfect for baking bread or pizza. The stoneware retains a lot of heat that will cook and tey transfer heat directly to the bottom of your bread – resulting in a better, crispier crust than you could achieve by putting your dough on a baking sheet. They’re typically thought of as something for use in home ovens, but baking stones can also be used outside on the grill. The grill is an ideal makeshift pizza oven because it can get much hotter than most ovens, meaning that you get a more pizza oven-like temperature and a crisper crust in a shorter baking time.
Many companies make pizza stones that are meant to go on the grill, but one of the prettiest is the Emile Henry Flame Top Pizza Stone. This handcrafted clay stone is the perfect size for a pizza and still leaves you with some room on your grill for cooking other things. It has a smooth glazed finish that makes cleanup very quick and easy (compared to natural stones, where grease and flavors can sink into the stone). Another great feature is that this stone has handles, so you can actually serve directly on the stone and remove it from the grill even while hot, which handle-less stones make a lot more difficult. Being able to turn your regular grill into a real pizza oven gives you a whole new set of options for summer grilling season. For instance, if you’re not making pizza, you can also throw vegetables on top of the stone and roast them at high temperatures while you grill steak or burgers, and you can bake regular loaves of bread on it if you just don’t want to heat up the kitchen on a hot day.
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April 23, 2012After you heat up your stone in the oven, do you need to spray your stone or apply cornmeal on the stone before you slide your raw pizza for baking?