A pizza stone of steel

I used to buy pizza stones regularly. All too regularly, in fact, as they inevitably seemed to shatter somewhere around the fifth or sixth use. So I switched to terra cotta floor tiles from Home Depot. They shattered, but they were cheap and easy to replace. But I figure nothing, no how, no way, is going to damage my newest pizza “stone.� It’s a 15-pound, almost 1/2-inch-thick sheet of solid steel called, appropriately enough, Baking Steel.

Andris Lagsdin is the inventor. He also happened to be a former pizza cook who worked for his family’s Massachusetts-based steel company. Talk about kismet. He was frustrated by the fragility of ceramics (see, I told you) and was inspired by a line in Nathan Myhrvold’s “Molecular Cuisine� that talked about the superior thermal conductivity of steel.

In August, he popped his idea for the Baking Steel up on Kickstarter and quickly generated more than $38,000 in pledges to start manufacturing. He started shipping in September and has already been featured in Bon Appetit magazine and on the Serious Eats blog.

You use a Baking Steel much as you would a ceramic stone – put it on the lowest rack and heat at the highest oven temperature for at least 45 minutes. Slide the dough straight onto the metal and it’ll be cooked in a flash (seriously, some of the testimonials claim baking times of less than 4 minutes).

Admittedly, it’s considerably more expensive than a ceramic pizza stone ($72 plus shipping, which heavy as it is will not be inconsiderable). But let’s hope this is one stone I’ll only have to buy once.

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