Many pizza enthusiasts have recognized the value of using a pizza stone! Offering the ability to evenly cook your pizza in a timely manner, producing perfect crust every time, pizza stones are all you need to cook delicious gourmet pizzas!
If you want to keep making tasty pies on it, you’ll need to properly maintain and clean it. Read on to learn the dos and don’ts of caring for your pizza stone!
Before Cooking
Properly caring for your pizza stone entails a few things before even cooking with it!
When you first buy a pizza stone, it will be clean and free of any seasonings or scratches. This might prompt you to spray or rub some type of olive oil onto the pizza stone, which is not a good idea. If you apply oil to the pizza stone, it can start smoking and burning while heating up.
You should instead let a natural coat of seasoning develop on the stone through using the pizza stone multiple times. After a few uses, it will start to feature a flavor representative of the pizzas you cooked on it previously.
Eventually, it will have it’s own rich flavor that will really make your pizzas sing! You can give the stone a simple wiping, as it may have some particles on it from production. Try not to get it too wet, you just want to wipe the surface.
Before you even think about slapping a pizza on that bad boy, heat up your pizza stone first!
The biggest mistake many first-time pizza stone users make is failing to heat up their pizza stone before cooking. If you stick a cold pizza stone in a hot oven, there is a good chance it will crack and become useless. To combat this, heat up your pizza stone and oven at the same time. This will allow your stone to heat up gradually and not crack due to any drastic changes in temperature.
After Cooking
The first step to caring for a pizza stone after using it to cook with is to let it cool down! What makes a pizza stone so effective is how well it retains the high temperature of the oven.
It will maintain that high temperature for a few hours, so you won’t want to touch it until it has completely cooled down.
After it has completely cooled down, you can now start to actually clean the stone. Before explaining how, there are two things you must know to never do: use soap, and submerge your stone in water (unless you have no other choice!).
Pizza stones are porous, meaning they have tiny holes that absorb moisture. If you use soap, those pores will absorb the soap, forever tainting any pizzas cooked on it with soap. Following the same logic, if you soak your pizza stone, it will absorb water into the stone, requiring a baking cycle to steam it all out.
You may not need to always clean your stone. Stains are part of the pizza cooking process, and will not come off through washing. When cleaning your pizza stone, you should primarily be focusing on stuck-on pieces of food.
To begin doing that, use a tool to directly scrape off food debris from the stone. Try to avoid using a metal spatula, as that may damage your stone. After scraping all food bits, wipe down the stone with a damp cloth.
Washing Your Stone
Once you’ve scraped off all the loose pieces of food, you may notice it needs a deeper cleaning. This can be a little tricky because you can’t use soap and want to avoid soaking the stone.
As a worst case scenario, if you really have some tough pizza bits stuck onto the stone, you can soak your stone overnight.
This will allow the hardened pieces to soften and come off easier, but this comes at the expense of filling the stone with water. This isn’t as serious as getting soap in it, but you still need to dry the stone out before you use it. You can do this by letting it sit in a hot oven for several hours, letting the water steam out of it. If you don’t do this, you’ll wind up with a soggy pizza next bake.
If you use a Cast Elegance pizza stone, you have the good fortune of having a highly durable stone! Cast Elegance stones can be put through a self-cleaning cycle of an oven, which can make the pizza stone look almost new! As long as you steer clear of soap and try to avoid submerging the stone, you’ll be on the right path to ensuring your pizza stone lives a long, tasty life!
Find the Most Durable Pizza Stone!
Now you should know how to properly use and care for your newly purchased pizza stone! Once you’ve used it a couple times, it should become second nature and you won’t have to think about it.
Just remember that a pizza stone requires care prior to and after cooking! Make sure to heat up your pizza stone as the same time as the oven, and don’t try and season it with oil!
After you’ve chowed down on a delicious creation, the not-so-fun cleaning portion of eating begins.
Pizza stones are really pretty easy to clean, just let them cool down and gently scrape off stuck on bits! Above all, absolutely do not use soap! The last thing you want is a soap-flavored pizza! Try to avoid submerging your pizza stone unless it’s really dirty and needs a thorough cleaning. Don’t forget to dry your stone out after soaking it!
If you want a high-quality pizza stone that is really easy to care for, look no further than the Cast Elegance pizza stone!
Made of extremely durable thermarite, Cast Elegance stones can handle the hottest temperatures and last for years! They won’t crack and they’ll consistently provide you with perfect, crispy crust!
Check out the strongest pizza stone on the market and forever change how you view (and eat) pizza!
