Do you brush your stone?

[MD56]

Hi All,

I have a setup that cooks with a pizza stone, but at very high temps.

I'm finding that as I start getting to my 2nd -3rd pizza of the night, that I get a lot of semolina that gets left on the stone and ends up just burning. This hasn't caused a huge problem, but I do notice that some of it gets stuck to the bottom of my pies.

Just curious if you stone bakers brush your stone off between pizzas? I know that this is common for WFO cooking, but I was just curious if the same applies for baking on a pizza stone as well.

Thanks!

[TropicalCoasting]

Re: Do you brush your stone?

I dont use semolina
Roll the dough on baking paper
Let it rise slightly for the second time on the paper as the stones getting hot
Make your pizza
Take the hot stone out of the oven (I use a wooden peel)
Put the Pizza and Paper on the hot stone
After 8 minutes (at 250C)
Use your peel to hold the edge of the pizza from sliding while you remove the paper from under the pizza (it should be 80 %ish cooked by now)
Leave the Pizza on the stone for another 2 to 3 minutes depending on thickness and moisture levels of ingredients.
Take out stone and pizza with peel
Cut, eat ,reload
(I have 2 stones so I leave them on the stone cut to maintain temp as I eat them with my wife or friends)

[Greenman]

Re: Do you brush your stone?

Baking paper for a little while until the bottom firms is an easy way to manage the pizzas. Easy to build the pizza on the paper and slip it into the oven without any problem.

Not the way of the purist but a good thing for someone with a new oven that is working their way through getting the pizza base right, learning about their oven and figuring things out generally.

A handy stepping stone for some. By the way, the paper goes black quite quickly if the hearth is very hot but if you are quick it can be managed before it goes too far. Like most things in the oven it is about timing and judgement.

I have moved on past the baking paper but it did save my life a couple of times.

[jeeppiper]

Re: Do you brush your stone?

I use cornmeal on the peel to allow the pizza to roll off.....it burns in the oven, however you can blow the cornmeal off the oven floor
with a piece of copper pipe. (careful not to inhale or you will burn you lungs.)

[barryvabeach]

Re: Do you brush your stone?

I would brush it off if I were you. The other option, which is what I use, is a superpeel. I won't link to it, but you can find it with google, I don't want to sound like I am pushing it too much, but it is very good. Before the superpeel, I would put a light dusting of seminola, or rice flour, or even cornmeal, but if the pie was on the wooden peel too long before I launched, it would stick, and things got ugly. The other problem, which only happened once or twice, but was a total disaster, was when it didn't stick at all and the pizza shot across the pizza stone, and part of it hung off the back, causing the sauce and cheese to drip down onto the bottom of the oven. The superpeel solves both problems, and your problem with seminola burning because I use no dusting of any kind, just make the pie on the super peel. I can let it sit on the peel for 5 or 10 minutes, and it still releases without a hitch, and it is always right where you want it to go, never too far or too short. Highly recommend it. BTW, I use a different peel to retrieve the pie. You can retrieve it with the superpeel, but I have never tried doing that since I have other wooden peels around, and usually have the second pie waiting on the super peel before I retrieve the first from the oven.

[MD56]

Re: Do you brush your stone?

I spin out and top my pie on a cheap wooden pizza peel. Since I cook in a WFO I have to transfer it to a long handled aluminum peel and then it goes into the WFO.

For the most part, the problem I was having was with the aluminium peel. The pie would transfer fine off of the wooden surface, but if there wasn't enough semolina on the metal peel it would stick instantly. Of course as noted in the first post, I was having issues with the WFO and the semolina also.

Since I posted the OP I've started using just regular 00 flour on the aluminum peel. This works well for non stick, but I've noticed that if I dust it too heavily then some of the dry flour will stick to the bottom of the pizza and it will have a dry floury feel when you eat it, not terrible but not optimal either.

I picked up a cheap slab of marble from Craigslist last week so I'm going to try using doing my prep on that tonight and see how it goes.

[hodgey1]

Re: Do you brush your stone?

Hi All,

I have a setup that cooks with a pizza stone, but at very high temps.

I'm finding that as I start getting to my 2nd -3rd pizza of the night, that I get a lot of semolina that gets left on the stone and ends up just burning. This hasn't caused a huge problem, but I do notice that some of it gets stuck to the bottom of my pies.

Just curious if you stone bakers brush your stone off between pizzas? I know that this is common for WFO cooking, but I was just curious if the same applies for baking on a pizza stone as well.

Thanks!

I have been cooking pizza on a stone in my home oven for years. I never have to clean it off while cooking on it that day 4-6 14" pies. You maybe using to much semolina? I lightly dust my peel. The two keys are not to leave your dough on the peel too long " more than 5-7 mins and next, before you put the pie into the oven be sure to get it sliding on your peel with a few short jerks of the wrist. It doesn't take a lot of semolina to keep it moving.

I use long handled wood peels in my WFO also with no problems. If your making a lot of pizza "10 or more" it may be necessary to brush it off if the char is bothering you. In a WFO the char is what I'm looking for.