How do you make a pizza stone at home? Grab some unglazed quarry tiles from your local home improvement store – enough to put a pizza on. Wash them with warm water (no soap or detergent) and let them dry. Rub a little bit of olive oil on the tiles to fill the pores.
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Great pizza doesn’t have to cost much.
12th Feb 2010 Nick Kindelsperger
If youre not down with pizza stones, its time. Bread-bakers and home pizza afficionados praise them for their heat-retaining, moisture-wicking ability to imitate the floor of a brick oven. You put it in your oven and it not only provides a rustic surface to bake the bread on, but it also keeps the heat of the oven steady. Especially when it comes to pizza, that ever-important underside char and blistering (sometimes known as the “upskirt” ) will only ever come with a stone, which you can get absolutely blazing hot over a long oven preheat.
Awhile back, my pizza stone cracked in half, and I never got around to replacing it. But rather than spending $40 on a slab of stone from Williams-Sonoma on which to bake my pizza, though, you can instead go to Home Depot and cobble it together for a few bucks. Mine, in fact, came out exactly at $2.98.
This discovery was lost amidst the technical aspects of fermentation and gluten-development in my homemade square pizza post last week (even I was confused by the end). It seemed news-worthy enough to merit its own post.
Id read about people who were cool and did this, eschewing the overpriced piece of stone and visiting building-supply stores instead, where they bought unglazed tiles for pennies. Well, now Ive joined them.
After confusing a couple of Home Depot employees and having them look up some specs on a few tiles I found at their store, I was successful. Heres what you need to know.
The tiles have to be unglazed It is absolutely essential that they are unglazed. A glaze on the tile can contain lead, and when subjected to the heat of the oven, this can transfer to the food youre cooking, possibly into the air.
Quarry tiles is another name for them, and they look like terra-cotta pots These things are essentially just really cheap tiles often installed in commercial settings or other high-traffic areas. The best way to pick them out is to look for something in the brownish-red hue of flowerpots. These were the only tile in the store that resembled terra cotta pots.
They should be among the cheapest tiles in the store Ive read about them for prices as low as 30 cents. Mine went for a cool $0.45. Six of them line up to make plenty of room (one added advantage is that the surface is a rectangle rather than a circle).
Thats it. Though Ive just used them once, the worked very well for my pizza, and withstood over 500 degrees of heat for more than an hour of preheating.
Are they as good as the highest-quality tones, like the Fibrament that pizza afficionados rave about ? For me, they get the job done and the price is right.
How To Make a Pizza Stone from ordinary tile
FAQ
Can I use a tile instead of pizza stone?
What is the best tile for a pizza oven?
Can you use porcelain tile for pizza oven?
Can you use ceramic tile for pizza stone?
Yes, you can use ceramic tile for pizza stone if you don’t have one on hand. Place the tiles in the oven and preheat it to the desired temperature for pizza.
Can you put a pizza stone in the oven?
For this reason, they can be put in an oven to serve as a pizza stone without the worry of breaking. Tiles also come in different sizes that can fit any oven. When heated to the maximum temperatures of the oven, they are able to withstand the heat and in turn, create a hot environment suitable for cooking pizza.
Can pizza stone be used as a pizza stone?
Pizza is not pizza without that crusty taste. When cooking a homemade pizza, the normal pizza stones hardly gives an enough crusty taste. Considering the high cost of purchasing a pizza stone, it just doesn’t cut out for its job. Ceramic tiles however have been used as a pizza stone and their result has been magnificent.
Do quarry tiles fit in oven?
The quarry tile needs to fit in your oven so that there is at least an inch or so space all the way around it. Be sure to measure the inside of your oven carefully. Some people use just one of the big tiles which works well if you are going to make small pizzas. However, it is easiest to buy several six inch tiles and fit them in your oven.