When I was in college, a small investment saved me hundreds of dollars in my take-out budget. I figured out how I could stiff the pizza parlor by making delicious pizza at home. I had stumbled upon the baker’s secret weapon: the baking stone.

A baking stone is a very flat clay block, usually square or circular, that absorbs oven heat. You put it on the oven rack and let it heat up thoroughly, and then put whatever you’re baking directly on top of it. The concentrated heat delivers amazing crusts on bread and pizza, beautifully browned cookies, perfect pies, etc. If you don’t have one, you’ll be surprised at how much a baking stone improves the quality of your baking.

The results are particularly dramatic with pizza. On the baking stone you don’t have to worry about the center of the crust being undercooked because the heat is distributed evenly throughout.

My grocery store has a little deli area with pizza ingredients ready to go. I buy freshly made sauce (you can also make your own or use cheaper canned sauce) and shredded cheese, and if I don’t have time to make dough I buy that as well. One caveat: pizza dough is sometimes made in the morning so even though it is refrigerated it slowly rises throughout the day. If you buy it in the late afternoon you will have fluffy thick crust. I like this effect but if you like thin crust, I recommend making it yourself.

The way to make delicious pizza is to set your oven really hot. I like it on 475 (turn convection on if you have it.) Before you turn the oven on, though, insert the rack in the second lowest position and put your baking stone on it. After your oven heats up let the stone sit in the hot oven for about 20 minutes.

Load up a pizza peel with a good dusting of cornmeal. This will help the pizza slide off! Ball up the dough and smash in flat with your fist. You can roll it out or stretch the rest of it by hand, or toss it if you have the skills for that. (My experiments with tossing dough are futile but here’s inspiration if you want to try! ) When your dough is size you want, lay the dough on the peel and cover with toppings.

Getting the pizza on the stone can be tricky, so have a metal spatula in hand. If you’ve put enough cornmeal on it will slide right off the peel onto the stone with a gentle nudge from the spatula. Shut the oven door quickly and bake about 10 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling. Remove with the peel, slice and enjoy!

Of course pizza lends itself to customization. I like to make a roasted garlic and olive oil spread for the crust and use my own mix of smoked mozzerela, fontina, asiago with a little drizzling of pesto. This is definitely an area where you can be very creative! A note of caution: the more toppings you add, the longer it will take to bake.

You can also make tons of other things with pizza dough like bread sticks, pizza dippin’ strips, calzones, and foccacia. I love to make little rustic vegetable tartlets – I sauté the vegetables in crème sauce then spread them on a small round of dough, fold about an inch of edge over and then bake them on the stone.

If you have a bread machine with a dough cycle, introduce it to your baking stone. They will be best friends! I use a bread machine entirely for its dough cycle. You just put the ingredients in the bread pan, and it does all of the kneading and rising for you then beeps when the dough is ready. Then you bake the bread on the baking stone and it comes out much better than in the bread machine. Any yeasted bread can be made this way: I’ve made bagels, pretzels, Italian bread, dinner rolls, and cinnabuns. And, of course, pizza dough!

I’ll leave with you links to a couple of dough recipes. This is one I’ve used with my bread machine. And here’s a very thoughtful blog post with a recipe for hand made dough. I prefer a hotter oven and shorter cooking time, but experiment and see which you like best!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 12:33 am and is filed under Fast and Easy, Dinners, Baking Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.