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A pizza stone is the best tool for baking up crispy pies that’ll rival those made by your favorite restaurant, but it can also do so much more. After making more than 50 pizzas, 24 flaky croissants, and 10 loaves of rustic bread on four stones and two baking steels, we think the FibraMent-D Home Oven Baking Stone is the best all-purpose stone for preparing crisp pizza, crusty bread, and golden pastries.
This all-purpose baking stone is best for prolific home bakers, yielding crisp, puffy pizzas, crusty bread, and airy croissants.
This thick steel slab will have you turning out pizzas that rival your favorite brick-oven spot.
This affordable all-purpose stone lets you bake pizza and bread with crispy golden crusts and is also good to grill.
This all-purpose baking stone is best for prolific home bakers, yielding crisp, puffy pizzas, crusty bread, and airy croissants.
The FibraMent-D baking stone is the best and most versatile stone we tested. This ¾-inch-thick ceramic slab holds enough heat to bake multiple pro-quality pizzas back-to-back. And its coarse surface yields crispy bottoms and puffy crusts. But near-perfect pizza isn’t the only reason we chose the FibraMent stone as our top pick. It’s an all-purpose baking surface that can help you make airy croissants, light flaky biscuits, and pies with golden bottom crusts. FibraMent also offers the most size options of all our picks.
This thick steel slab will have you turning out pizzas that rival your favorite brick-oven spot.
If you want the best possible chance at creating a pizza with the black-spotted crust of a brick-oven Neapolitan pie, the ⅜-inch-thick Modernist Cuisine Baking Steel is your best bet. It conducts heat better than any ceramic stone we tested, yielding pizzas with dark and puffy crusts. And unlike the FibraMent, this durable steel plate is safe to use under any broiler and on the grill. But even though the Baking Steel is our favorite for pizza, it gives off too much intense heat for baking bread and more-delicate baked goods, and it will scorch the bottoms of cookies or croissants. It also takes a lot of muscle to hoist this 23-pound slab of steel in and out of the oven.
This affordable all-purpose stone lets you bake pizza and bread with crispy golden crusts and is also good to grill.
If you’re an occasional baker or just interested in a more budget-friendly option, the Honey-Can-Do Rectangular Pizza Stone is a solid choice. (This used to be called the Old Stone Oven Rectangular Pizza Stone. A representative from Honey-Can-Do assured us that the stones are the same.) The pizzas we baked on this stone ranked third among the seven models we tested. They had a slightly paler, softer crust than pizzas we made with the Baking Steel or the FibraMent-D, though they were still delicious and satisfying. This stone also produced crusty bread loaves with springy crumb. And its gentler heat made it even better than the FibraMent for baking croissants, which turned out so uniformly golden you’d have thought they came from a professional bakery. Plus, this stone is safe to use on the grill or under a broiler.
The best baking stone: FibraMent-D
This all-purpose baking stone is best for prolific home bakers, yielding crisp, puffy pizzas, crusty bread, and airy croissants.
For folks who want a great all-purpose baking stone, the FibraMent-D is the best choice. It made the puffiest and crispiest pizzas of all the ceramic stones we tested, and it’s more versatile than a baking steel. You can tackle breads, tarts, biscuits, pastries, and pies on the FibraMent-D stone and avoid any excess browning, because ceramic doesn’t conduct heat as well as steel. That means you can keep the stone in your oven for a wide range of recipes.
The FibraMent-D has the roughest surface texture of all the ceramic stones we used. We believe that the craggier surface provides channels for steam to escape, which is one of the reasons why the FibraMent stone produced pizzas that were crusty, dark, and chewy, with outer rims chock-full of big air pockets. The pizzas were the best we baked on any ceramic stone we tested. We were similarly delighted by the rustic bread we baked on the FibraMent-D. Both the wheat and white versions had chewy, crisp crusts and an airy crumb.
At ¾ inch thick, the FibraMent-D is the thickest baking stone we tested. Compared with the Honey-Can-Do, the FibraMent was better for cooking consecutive pizzas because it held more heat, which resulted in a shorter recovery time between bakes. And despite its thickness, it took about the same time to preheat to 500 °F as the thinner models we tested, which was about an hour. But if you’re making pizza, you’ll get better oven spring and browning the longer you let a baking stone preheat. We found that all of our picks performed and recovered heat better between pizzas when they preheated for 1½ hour.
The FibraMent stone produced pizzas that were crusty, dark, and chewy, with outer rims chock-full of big air pockets.
We appreciate that the FibraMent-D is available in three rectangular and four round sizes, the most of any stone we tested. FibraMent also gives you the option to trim a rectangular stone to a specified size. When contacted, the company noted that the service costs an additional $10. So whether you have a tiny apartment oven or a big high-end range, you’re likely to find the perfect size for your needs. For maximum versatility, we recommend a rectangular stone that’s roomy enough for oblong loaves or large batches of bread and rotating pizza as it bakes.
The FibraMent-D stone comes with a 10-year warranty. We don’t have personal long-term experience with it, but Susan Reid, senior recipe developer for King Authur Baking , told us that her 15-year-old FibraMent baking stone is still in great shape, and she uses it for most baking.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
The pizzas we baked on the FibraMent-D weren’t quite as good as the ones we made on a baking steel. But we don’t think that’s a dealbreaker, since the FibraMent also works for delicate pastries, making it more versatile than a steel. Plus, the second-place pizzas were still crisp and delicious.
The FibraMent-D is available only through the company’s website—and prepare yourself for some old-school Web design. But free shipping more than makes up for it. FibraMent stones are also more expensive than the other ceramic models we tested. If you’re new to baking bread and unsure whether you’ll stick with it, we recommend getting your feet wet with the Honey-Can-Do baking stone.
This stone is not flameproof, which means you can’t use it on the grill or under a gas broiler. But FibraMent sells stones for the grill in four size options that come with a metal shield to divert the flames for $8 to $12 more.
Just like any other ceramic pizza stone, the FibraMent-D will stain as you use it. This is unavoidable, and the stains don’t affect performance. But you should still scrape off burnt food bits between uses when the stone is at room temperature. You can use a metal spatula for the stubborn bits, then brush the crumbs with a sturdy bench brush.
Equipment Review: Pizza and Baking Stones and Steels
How much does a baking stone cost?
All else being equal, baking stones are lighter on the wallet than steels, too. The price for a good 15-inch by 12-inch-ish stone is between $32 and $80, while the price of most 1/4-inch steels of similar dimensions start around $80. And 3/8-inch thick ones can cost $170.
Why do you need a baking stone?
A baking stone is made so that it heats evenly, meaning the entire surface is warmed to cook your foods. Since they are also porous, a baking stone will absorb some of the moisture in your bread or dough meaning you will have a slightly crispier crust. 2. Easy to Use and Clean
What is a baking stone?
A baking stone is often called a pizza stone as well. It’s a piece of either stone or ceramic that is used to mimic a stone oven by heating through to cook the bottom of your foods as well as the top. 1. Perfect Crusts A baking stone is made so that it heats evenly, meaning the entire surface is warmed to cook your foods.
How do you use a baking stone?
It is used in baking for a variety of purposes, but most commonly for pizzas and bread. The stone’s porous surface draws moisture out of the dough, resulting in a crispy crust, much like those baked in a commercial brick oven. Using a baking stone is simple. First, place the stone in a cold oven and preheat it to the desired temperature.