March 23, 2014 - 8:13pm
Baking Stones
I am starting to experiment more with bread and have read up a little about utilizing baking stones to get a nice outer crust and a good oven spring, among other advantages. I was wondering if there are any recommended brands, types that work better than others and what not? Also what is a reasonable price to expect to spend on one? I have heard that using heavier, thicker ones work a lot better. Any information, tips and recommendations would be appreciated!
-M
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...is a ~13" stone I got from Home Depot for about $13 (in the grill section). Just a stone, no handles or anything. I was at a Tuesday Morning earlier and they had a 15" for $20. I say go with a 15" if you're using purely for oven baked breads (I was limited to 13" b/c I got for using as heat deflector in my kamado grill). As for thickness, I'd wager that a 1/4" stone works as well/better than a 1" stone. The purpose of a stone is to provide direct heat, so it's much easier to heat up a thinner stone than thick stone. No sense wasting an extra ~20-30 minutes of heating the oven to get a thicker stone up to temperature. Oh, these are ROUND stones, as well. I think most home baking needs nothing larger than a 15" round stone (bread AND pizzas :) ). You'll need a way to get the breads on/off the stone, as well (baker's peel is standard tool, but I just repurposed an old cookie sheet and it does the job just fine).
Good luck & enjoy :)
Cook's Illustrated gave the Old Stone Oven Baking Stone top marks, you can get it for around $40 on amazon. There is a lot of agreement that thickness matters (with 1/2 inch often mentioned as the right balance), but some of the reasons given, such as the increased thermal mass evening out the heat of the oven, may not be true (at least for home bakers and the smallish stones they use). A thicker stone will retain more heat though, it might be in the process of loading the pizza enough heat is lost from 1/4 inch stones to be a problem.
If you're looking mostly at making bread though and not using it for other cooking, you might consider a La Cloche (or a cast iron dutch oven). You're more limited in shaping options, but they work very well for hearth breads and you don't have to fuss around with steam pans and whatnot.
True, it will hold more heat, but for practical purposes, when it's in the oven, once a 1/4" stone or a 1" stone gets to temperature, both will hold heat the same. Now if you take them out and set them on the counter, the thinner one (1/4 the mass) will cool 4x faster. But in the oven, the cool air let in by the kitchen is more than offset by the heat in the oven, and cooling the stone even a few degrees is unlikely if you were to leave the oven open for 30 seconds.
This was helpful! Thank you!
If this is the sort of crust you are after....
Check out the Lodge Combo Cooker, recommended by Chad Robertson in Tartine Bread. That is, if you are primarily interested in baking those round peasant loaves.
I like the combo cooker a lot because one pan is so shallow so it is easy to get the dough into it, and then the deeper pan just fits right on top to make a nice steam shelter (using the dough's water to create the steam).
Tartine is on sale for the kindle edition for only $9.90. I don't know how it looks on the Kindle vs. print, however.
Is definitely something worth looking into, ill check it out. Thank you!
Everything said so far is exactly right....
I've heard some people manage to acquire a stone, such as granite or marble... any rock will do, if you can lift it and if it can take the heat. I believe some stones have moisture, or air pockets & may be susceptible to popping(or explosions!)
I live near Virginia & drove down to the soapstone quarry (only one in the US) off Rte 81 & managed to get several slabs of soapstone. Those guy swear by it for grilling and baking. I've found it to be superior to my ceramic baking stones - but they do take a long time to get hot, but once hot REALLY hold the heat. I can bake 2 loaves on each stone - 2 stones in the oven.
I'm kinda weird, I guess - when I do bread - I like to do 8-10 loaves & freeze and/or give away.
I hated the tiles I bought years ago.
a website with more information about this company? Do you recommend soapstones in general? Or just the particular place you happen to purchase them?
And for me, baking anywhere between 2 and 10 loaves is pretty normal.. Just depends on what I want to do and what kind of mood I am in.