Stainless steel plate to replace baking stone
Can I use a stainless steel plate to replace the baking stone for the oven?
I can get access to black granite stone. I can it custom cut to the size I need (about 16 inches x 14 inches). HOWEVER, one piece of that granite will be very heavy. My granite supplier says at least 10kg. And I need 2 such stones to bake 2 loaves at a time. So total weight will be around 20kg. I am worred that 20kg will be too much a strain on the side rails that hold up the metal racks (I plan to place the granite pieces on top of the oven racks). Anybody has a similar issue/problem?
As a substitute, I am thinking of using 3-4mm thick stainless steel plates. These should be lighter to some extent.
What are your thoughts and feedback on this? Do you think it will be ok for the loaves?
Currently, my oven comes with a metal tray. I basically invert/turn upside down that tray and bake my loaves on top of that. And for the 2nd loaf, I have a cookie tray that I turn upside down and bake on top of that. The problem is that neither fully maximise the space of the oven. Also, the cookie trap warps and bends when I spray water into the oven to create steam.
Since I am currently using metal as my baking base, I thought that a 3-4mm thick steel plate will do the job as well, minus the warping when spraying the oven. And I can custom cut the steel plates so that it fits the racks perfectly and maximises my baking area (which will allow me to bake longer baguettes!)
Thanks in advance,
whw
Rest the plate on the rack because like a stone, it is important to be at least an inch away from all the side walls and the door. Parchment combined works well. It does need to be pre-heated.
I called it a Stainless stone.
Excerpt June 22, 2006 (Archives in Mini's blog)
I had used this in my mini oven in China a few years back.
Mini
What about cast aluminum plates? They are quite common and cheap here.
Generally they are quite thick (3-4 mm), thus they should heat very fast and retain heat long enough for our purpose. Moreover they are much lighter than stainless steel.
I always feared to use baking paper on the stone because I thought it would pick fire easily, but if you say it's safe I'm relieved.
There's a pizza stone alternative from Unox made of cast aluminum called Fakiro. The bottom of the plate is an array of studs like a Fakir's bed of nails, hence the name.The studs are probably to increase the surface area at the bottom of the plate and bring the plate to temp faster.
http://www.google.com.sg/images?q=fakiro%20pizza%20unox%20image&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=SBu&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&s...
I have been using this since Feb this year and it works quite well. The problem with granite is that it takes a longer time to preheat and it may crack. All the granite slabs I used before cracked badly and with all that talk about radiation, I thought Aluminum might be the lesser devil. I had no issues with burnt bottoms and the preheat time was around 30 mins.
After getting the Fakiro, I thought just about any Aluminum plate of about 5mm should do the job. The studs probably contribute only a marginal improvement to the thermal efficiency.
30 minutes seem a lot of time for aluminum, to me. Fakiro's page reads 3 minutes. Did you mispell your digit?
Given the properties of Aluminum, that's probably true but when I mentioned preheat, I meant the time it took for the oven to be ready for loading. I am using a Unox oven with three 40x60 tray capacity. My oven has a single forced convection heater with no top or bottom grill so it takes a longer time than those that radiate heat directly onto the Fakiro.
My 14 x 16 x 3/4 inch stone weighs 10.8 lbs, I calculate the density to be 1.8 g/cm3.
The density of SS is 7.9. Granite has a density of 2.8.
According to my calcs, the stainless steel plate of the same dimensions as a baking stone but 4 mm thick would weight a little less than 10 lbs. Therefore you're not really saving much weight going with stainless over a baking stone. I assume this is SS all the way through. (That's got to be very expensive)
Granite has a density of 2.8. Granite of the same dimensions and thickness as a baking stone would weigh about 17 lbs. It would be very heavy to lift in and out of the oven.
I see no problem baking on SS. I don't know about granite. Could it crack and break in the oven? Maybe someone else has some experience with that.
If you have a cheap source for the SS plate, go for it. Otherwise just buy a baking stone.
Sorry about all the calcs. I'm an engineer and I just can't help myself. Therapy didn't help!
Mary
I did pretty much the same as you, thinking "why not just buy commercial baking stones?". Then I saw the poster was from Malaysia and figured they were not readily available there.
Hi, I have a pizza baking stone that I bought from Germany, and I get on well enough with it, but I also have a steel plate about 3mm thick that I also use, and I also like!
I'm sorry I can't say which I prefer - but the steel one is easier to move about, and doesn't take up the same room.
The pizza stone is heavy, but has a nice 'earthy' feel to it.
Thanks for all the feedback guys! I really do appreciate it. This forum is just great. I have learnt so much from here. The knowledge sharing is truly first class.
Mr Frost is spot on - I can't get my hands to baking stones here in Malaysia. And granite is way too heavy!
But with the affirmations from all you people that stainless steel plates are fine for baking bread, I will be going with that option.
And thanks Mini for the tip on giving at least 1 inch spacing all around. I believe that is needed for the air ventilation by the oven fan. I will need to reduce my plate size measurements slightly.
Cheers,
whw
I have not actually used a stainless "stone" unlike others here, but I worry about the conductance of metal versus other material. One reason stone and tile is good is that its conductance is low. That is, it gives up its heat slowly, helping the oven to maintain an even temperature and also imparting heat to the bread evenly. I would think from first principles that steel would give up too much heat too quickly.
I've noticed that when I bake on a steel sheet, the bottom of the loaf is often burned, whereas if I bake on parchment on top of the steel, it gets good and brown but doesn't burn. I think that is because the parchment slows the rate of trasnfer of heat to the loaf.
Jeremy
Yes, this sounds like a very important point to me that others have been ignoring. A stainless steel "stone" won't act like actual stone. I use the bottom of my cast iron pan to bake bread on because I don't really have anything else suitable for the job - however, I notice that the bottoms of my loaves are often burned. I'm sure a stone would do a bit better at that and not burn the bottoms like metal does.
same with cast iron pots and frying pans. Get it too hot and it will burn any food except water. No need to start out with super high heat, start out lower.
Mini
the next time I use my cast iron pot/plates. I heat my oven to 250C but even with parchment paper lining, my bread bottoms are burnt. One question about the fan though, would it be better to bake the bread with the fan on or off I'm never sure about this and it seems that with the fan on, the heat in the oven takes longer to reach a high temp. I normally pre-heat the oven with fan off and then turn the fan on half way through the baking.
If you are reducing the oven temperature because you are using a highly conductive support, why use the highly conductive support? I don't get it. If you crank up the heat later to get a good crust, won't you burn the bottom anyway?
I'm really not understanding how a metal plate is anything like a stone, other than it being a supporting surface.
Jeremy
Just to say that I forgot that I did indeed burn the base of a loaf once, using the steel plate.
Perhaps more suitable for pizza where it's in for a much shorter length of time.
a large cast iron griddle? You can get them for using on a gas or charcol grill, and I have one that I used on my gas cookstove over two burners, which has gone out to the grill. It would work like the stone, and probably do better than a piece of steel no matter if its does say stainless, I have had several stainless things not be so stainless, and some actually rusted, which means they weren't particularly good stainless steel. I would certainly not use any old steel chunk of flat iron, which who knows what it might be made from, and what it might off gas. But a cast iron griddle for cooking on, should be up to par.
The stainless is should be very shiny, whereas cast iron is black. Black would make it burn much faster just as a black pan browns the bottom of baked goods too much. I would just give it a go and see what happens.
Mary
An interesting concept... what if this idea were enlarged and spread over a rack to bake bread on? Tube bread? U-bread? Certainly not as heavy as metal or stone. Wonder what it's made of.
LINK
Mini