

Tested: Does a Pizza Stone Really Make a Better Crust?

Let's get down to the most important food science question: how to make the best pizza.

Since moving from New York to the Midwest, I've been on a quest to make a pizza crust that rivals those from the Big Apple's wood-burning ovens. I've been tinkering with the dough fermentation period, hoping to produce a more complex flavor by letting the dough ferment slowly in the refrigerator. Today, though, I'm feeling impatient. So I targeted the baking surface. Specifically: Does baking pizza on a pizza stone, instead of a regular baking sheet, make a difference?


For my test, I put a stone and a metal pan head-to-head. I made a pretty standard dough: flour, water, salt, yeast, and a little bit of oil. I briefly mixed the ingredients together so the flour could begin to form gluten and then let it rest. During this period, as the yeast ate carbohydrates in the four and produced carbon dioxide, the dough developed bubbles and began to puff up. At the same time, the gluten began getting stronger. After some more kneading, I put the dough aside for longer, letting it rise some more as the gluten relaxed and the bubbles continued forming.

About four hours later, I formed the dough into two pizzas. The dough was primed for the oven's 500 degrees: The relaxed gluten was pliable enough to inflate into big, Neapolitan-style bubbles in the crust, especially on the $50 Emile Henry pizza stone I used—at least in theory.

As seen in the image above, both pizzas cooked on preheated surfaces, one on the pizza stone (top), and one on a baking sheet (bottom).

The difference was subtle, if it was any difference at all. Yes, it seemed the pizza stone (left) was able to give the dough that first blast of heat faster than the pan did (right). If I really thought about it, the stone-baked pizza might have been slightly more evenly cooked. But that was only if I forced myself, upon each bite, to think about the properties of heat transfer of each of the materials—and not, as is my want, to be more concerned about enjoying the pizza as I wolf it down.

I'll keep experimenting. I'll let the dough ferment in my refrigerator for days, I'll use different cheese mixes. And I'll try different baking surfaces too: Word on the street is the Baking Steel may be the way to go, providing the best heat transfer a home pizza baker could ask for.

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