Pizzacraft ThermaBond Baking Stone (20"x14.5") - Pizza Stone for Oven & Grill, Heavy-Duty Baking Essential for Evenly Cooked Pizza, Bread, Pastries at Home - Must-Have Baking Tool (Rectangle)

Final update: I broke it. It did not break during use. I had it stored leaning against a wall and it fell over and shattered. My fault. I used it so many times at 550F to make pizzas, never had a problem. But you have to be careful with it. Im going to take the plunge and get a top quality baking steel of same size. Another update: 7 years later and I still love this stone. Has not chipped or cracked, has made countless loaves of bread, soft pretzels, and pizzas. You want one. UPDATE 2: 32 months down the road, and this stone is still great. It never gave me a bad smell, it never set my kitchen on fire, it never smoked. I use it all the time. Even if I switch it to a lower shelf and put something on an upper shelf, having the stone in there stabilizes the oven temperature and my food cooks better. I love this thing. It's the perfect size, and it really isn't all that heavy. UPDATE 1: 14 months later, this stone is still great. It gets a bit discolored here and there from food drips, but you just scrape off any burned on glop after it cools off. At first I was a bit worried that it might crack when I did steam infusion when baking bread ( place a latte cup of boiling water next to the loaves, and throw a coffee mug of boiling water into the bottom of the oven ) but that never happened. No worries. This stone works really well. ********* This thing is amazing! I shopped around online, read a bunch of baking reviews, and picked this one. If the $150 stones are any better, they can't be better by much. This stone is the best deal out there, period. After reading some of the reviews here, I was a little concerned that it might smell or smoke the first time, so I heated it up in an empty oven. There was a very minor odor that went away after a few minutes. I took it up to 550 degrees, then turned the oven off. EIGHT HOURS LATER the stone was still quite warm, a bit over 100 degrees. Amazing. The stone fits my standard size 30 inch wide electric oven's shelf perfectly, leaving a bit more than an inch on all 4 sides. It's twice as thick as the round pizza stone I had been using, with at least 50% more surface area. I bought this more for bread baking, so I could make longer loaves. It's solid, but doesn't weigh a ton. Not hard to move it around if I have to. Kudos also for the packaging: My stone came in a box inside a box inside the Amazon box. The sturdy inner box has firm foam corners and top and bottom padding, so it will be great for safe storage if I decide to not leave it in the oven all the time. Yes, it takes a bit longer to get the oven up to full heat. I'm OK with that. In return I get a very even heat distribution and a major thermal buffer. Which means the oven holds temperature, even if I have to open the door a couple times. Now I have to start making bigger batches of dough, to bake several loaves in one session, so as not to waste any of that heat.

I really love this pizza stone, and for several reasons (detailed below). Shipping: although you are not supposed to talk about shipping on this forum, I think it is worth pointing out how carefully wrapped and protected it is while shipping. The stone was set up in a Russian doll box style (in a box that was padded in another box which was padded in another box). Stones can chip or crack, and I am sure shipping them can cause some damage, but this company goes the extra mile to make sure nothing happens and your stone is safe! Presentation: this is only really an issue if you want to give it as a gift, but if you do, the box is comes in (the final box) is really nicely presented. It looks neat and crisp and it comes with directions on how to "prime" your stone! Size: this is a really big stone. It fits perfectly in my oven (if you have a smaller apartment oven, I would check the dimensions before purchasing) and allows me to make a pizza big enough for my entire family in one go! I wasn't sure I would like the rectangular shape (I've always had round ones previously) but it works great! I love that I'm able to make two (sourdough) bread rounds at one time...this was never really possible with the round stones, not matter how big they were. Feel: I love that this stone isn't super porous (it is still porous and it still absorbs water, but the pores are smaller than in other stones I've had). Other stones are sort of like lava rock...feel rough to the touch. This one feels very smooth, which I love. Effectiveness: I used the stone last night and panicked after I put it in the oven because I realized I didn't use cornmeal to prevent sticking. But actually, I didn't have any problems. The stone worked perfectly and I had a wonderfully chewy/crispy crust. I can't wait to make all sorts of other things on it! Price: compared to some other stones I've seen, I think (for the size and quality in particular) this is a VERY good stone and I HIGHLY recommend it! Overall: great product! I would highly recommend for an avid baker or for someone who wants to make store bought pizza just a little more special. GREAT PRODUCT!

My wife and I love this! Pizza night has now become a regular event at our place. The stone cooks pizza very well. We have not used it on our grill yet, so I can't vouch for that, but it works wonderful in the oven. I worked at a local pizza place for about 7 years back in high school and college. This stone is the closest I've come to replicating that same pizza store quality at home. We previously has a perforated steel pizza pan that was pretty much worthless, IMO. On a somewhat unrelated note, one thing we did back in my pizza shop days and that I find invaluable is using aluminum foil under the pizza to start it. The foil makes the pizza easy to move, rotate, and in the event of the crust on the bottom sticking, easier to fix the sticking without destroying the pizza. To do this, take a square of aluminum foil slightly larger than the diameter of the pizza, crinkle it up and then flatten it back out into a flat square. The goal is to change the foil from a flat, perfectly smooth surface, to a rough, uneven surface (won't stick as easily). Once your pizza dough is rolled out, ensure that it is well covered in flour (any "wet" surface on the bottom will stick to the foil or stone) and place it on the aluminum foil. Put all your sauce and toppings on the pizza. When you're ready to put the pizza in the oven, merely slide the aluminum foil (with pizza) on to your paddle (or other flat surface) and slide it off onto the heated pizza stone in the oven. Given that many ovens cook unevenly, after a few minutes in the oven, rotate the foil with the pizza 180 degrees so that the pizza will cook evenly on all sides (without the foil, the bottom crust of the pizza is often not be crisped up enough to rotate without mangling the pizza). You may need to do this a couple times, depending on how your oven is. Once you see all sides of the crust start to golden, pull the foil from underneath the pizza. The will allow the bottom crust to crisp up a bit more by being in direct contact with the stone. Assuming you floured your pizza properly, the foil should come out smoothly. If it doesn't, some of the dough may have stuck to it, in which case you may need to use a paddle to help separate it. Worst case scenario, you can pull the pizza and foil out of the oven and perform careful surgery before sticking it back in. It's better the dough stick to a piece of foil which you can pull out of the oven for surgery, than to a piping hot pizza stone. Once the pizza is directly on the stone, keep cooking till your reach your desired crispiness, potentially rotating it to keep the crust even.

I have had this for about 3 weeks now. I have made 3 pizzas and just had it in the oven while cooking 3 other times. The stone is heavy. I am a stroke victim with only about 30% use of my left side. I am able to pick up the stone with both hands but one handed would be impossible even with my good arm. It retains heat very well, normally taking a few hours to cool down once you got it up to temp. Im taking one star off for the smell as it still has that smell when heating up. It normally takes a few hours after cooking for it to dissipate. I am just starting in making my own pizzas and am loving it. I can make a super thin crust and on this stone it gets nice and crunchy. My last pizza tonight was a total disaster but not due to the stone. I guess I didnt have enough corn meal on my peel as when I first put it on, I tested it and it shook. It took me about 3 minutes to put my toppings on and into the oven we go. A good jiggle jiggle and almost a quarter of the toppings went off the pizza and onto the stone and the rest of the pizza went onto and off the front of the stone. What a smokey sticky mess. Nothing I could do but let it bake. 17 minutes later I had to slide the rack out because my peel couldnt get it from the front due to the dough cooking onto the side of the stone. I got my pizza off and resting while I look at the damage. The stone is a mess, black charred toppings everywhere not to mention the side now covered in hard dough. After letting it cool off, I was able to scrape everything off of it and fairly easy I will add and wash it with hot water.. Other than dark marks now in the stone, it doesnt appear to have hurt it at all. On the plus side, the pizza still tasted great. the smell it emits does not seem to get into the food so thats good. I had a harder time cleaning the oven then I did cleaning the stone. My big complaint is still the smell. Hopefully it will go away on its own. I have a hood vent that I turn on and it helps a lot, otherwise it might stay in the house a heck of a lot longer.

I've had a round pizza stone for years but found it useless for anything other than pizza. I bake all our bread from scratch and have been doing a lot of research on baking stones and steels. This pizza stone is the largest sold and is made of a synthetic material able to withstand 1200 degrees. (I'd also read the company offers excellent customer service if a stone arrives cracked, but mine came very well protected in styrofoam with lots of padding, so I had no reason to contact them.) The steels were not quite as large and double the price. Still, I was anxious about this pizza stone, until it came and fit perfectly in my 30-inch Viking double oven, with about two inches to spare on all sides. I can bake four loaf pans of bread on it, and they turn out brilliantly. The other day I made my first pizza;I heated the oven, stone at top rack, at 500 for an hour beforehand. My baking sheet was as large as the stone itself. To avoid soggy dough. I prebaked the dough for 5 minutes before adding all the sauce, pesto, cheeses and toppings. It only took another 10 minutes, and the result was perfect pizza. Now I leave the stone in the oven. I put a sheet of silicon parchment paper on it before sliding a glass baking dish or pie plate on it, just to protect my glass (neither Pyrex nor Anchor Hocking are as good now as my old ones are). I'd call this a definite Best Buy for the avid baker--especially for homemade bread. Every artist is only as good as her tools!

I can't say enough good things about this stone. I had to come back to review this fabulous stone when looking to purchase a 2nd one for my outside fireplace. This particular stone is now 6 years old and to me will be nearly irreplaceable. It will smell, smoke a bit in the beginning because it is new. Using it a dozen times isn't near enough use to get a stone so seasoned that it becomes the essential tool for your oven, grill, fireplace, etc. It will turn black and charred over TIME AND USE. Could take 50 times or more. This is called seasoned. I oiled mine in the beginning and put it in the oven on low temp for many hours at a time until the stone was no longer as porous. You will feel this by running your hand over the top. This provides the slick surface you need to easily slide pizza, breads etc., from the stone. The more you use it, the better it gets. After use, AND IT HAS COOLED, simply scrape the stuck on food with a straight edge spatula and quickly run under a bit of water to rinse. Towel dry and run a thin coat of cooking oil over the entire surface. NO SOAP. Mine is as slick as a ceramic plate now. Almost looks glazed. If you have the time and patience this requires in the beginning, it will bring you much joy and pride in your future culinary creations. Remember -Patience!!

I bought this pizza stone (cordierite) and an Artisan Steel pizza steel from Amazon last year (the stone in May 2021). I was curious about the material used. I have a large baking stone from 1998. For making pizza, I will give a small edge to the Artisan steel (16 inches by 14.5 and it weighs about 16 pounds, 1/4 inch thick). The steel gets very hot and stays hot for several hours after making pizza. For bread baking, the steel will scorch the bottom of the crust and make it tuff as shoe leather. So, my baking stones are better for bread. Last week I did a test, one with my 24 year old stone, one with the pizza craft stone. I got excellent results with each. I make either a thin or a medium crust pizza. The key is not steel or stone, but the key is (1) pre-heating the oven for an hour or so at its highest setting (hopefully 475 to 500 f) and (2) make sure to use the second level from the top in the oven. The oven is actually the most hot at the top. My oven is electric and has an exposed heating element on the bottom. My oven has 5 levels and I normally used the middle level for bread baking, cakes, pies etc. The steel takes about 9 to 9.5 minutes and the stones take a little longer, maybe 30 to 45 seconds. The pizza craft stone is the lightest of the three, I make a square pizza to take advantage of available space. The pizza craft stone is durable, well made and will make an excellent pizza. The crust will come out perfect and the toppings will be done all at the same time. When I have used the middle or lower rack levels in the oven with my older stone from the 90s, the baking takes 20 minutes or longer and the crust only gets done the next day when I reheat the leftover pizza. The weight of the pizza steel for many may be a deterrent. It is about as heavy as my 7 quart cast iron dutch oven or my 12 inch cast iron fry pan with lid.

I bought this stone recently with the intention of eventually baking pizzas on it. As soon as it was delivered, I tested it in the oven at 500 degrees without any baked goods, because I read the manufacturer's responses to reviews online which acknowledged that the stone can cause a smell the first time you use it. I didn't notice any smell at all, despite heating it for more than 60 minutes at high temperature. My sister has a round pizza stone she has been using for more than a decade to bake cookies, so I decided to test a couple of batches of cookies on this one (It was the holiday season.) before eventually moving on to pizza. I placed the cookie dough directly on the stone, because obviously, you're not going to slide them on with cornmeal as you would with a pizza dough and a pizza peel. The cookies from my first batch of dough came out great and again, no problems with odor. There was some staining where I had placed the dough balls for baking, but I did not use soap or any other cleaning product--just water and a good scraping down of the surface. The stains were still there, but I was not concerned because my sister said that her stone also has a patina from its many years of use. However, a week later, when I baked the second batch of dough, I did notice my eyes burning while the stone was heating, and this was concerning, but it wasn't severe and I hoped that it was just a one-time thing. Unfortunately, more recently, I had my stone in the oven and was preheating it to a high temperature for my first batch of pizza. I noticed when it was nearly up to temperature that my eyes were stinging severely and there was smoke coming from the vent of my oven. I panicked, thinking I had somehow stored something in the oven which had now caught on fire. I turned on the oven light and couldn't see anything but the stone. My eyes were stinging so badly that I had to put on my onion goggles. My two cats were crying, so I opened my windows as wide as I dared in winter, I opened the oven door and smoke came roiling out at me, so I quickly shut it! Of course I turned off the oven. I was starting to have major breathing problems because the smoke and odor were so intense. I stood by the open windows for clean air (I live in a high-rise apartment and did not dare open my apartment door for fear of making the building's fire alarms go off). Eventually, I was able to go back into the kitchen and put on some heat resistant oven mitts to pull out the stone. The smoke came pouring out heavy and malodorous as ever, and I got the stone out of the oven. It continued to smoke from the stains where cookies had been baked earlier. And I had to keep my windows open longer. >:-( Now mind you, the smoke coming from the stone was not from crusted-on cookie dough that had charred. The stains were just discolorations, as I made sure that the stone was continuously smooth from light to dark patches after both previous cleanings. And the odor was definitely like a "chemical bomb"--not like a natural, organic smell of burned food. The cookie dough stains had now changed color from light tan to black. It made me wonder if the pores of the stone had absorbed some material from the cookies and it reacted with the cordierite under intense heat to create this very noxious smoke. It has been more than a week, and my kitchen (my whole apartment, really) still stinks. I may have to throw away some pans and dishes stored near the oven that seem to have retained the odor, if they don't improve with washing. I will not use this stone again. It clearly is a threat now to my physical health and well-being, and I am unwilling to risk heating it again. I cannot recommend this stone to anyone, especially if you intend to use it for a variety of baked goods at varying oven temperatures. Maybe it would serve as a heat sink and oven temperature regulator if you never let it get stained with food, but as a medium for baking in contact with food?--NO WAY. The manufacturer did not provide any information that this could happen, even though I followed all recommended practices; now I do not fully trust Pizzacraft when they say that this stone is "natural" and "non-toxic."

Excelente producto

It is exactly as hoped for. Fits the oven perfectly allowing for several small pizzas (for my picky daughters) to be cooked at the same time. I'm planning on trying bagels this weekend. I was a bit surprised, positively, at how thick it is. Clearly it takes a while to heat up to temp, but that is the whole point of the stone in the first place. BTW - as a cleaning trick, once to gets too dirty, leave it in the oven when you run through the self-clean cycle. The very high heat burns off all the grease and carbon, leaving you with a pristine stone and a bit of grey ash!

Había pensado mucho si hacerme de una piedra para hornear o no. La recibí hace un par de días y ayer la probé por primera vez preparando pizzas. La piedra funcionó de maravilla, y el resultado de cocinar con piedra comparado con hacerlo sin ella, es abismal. El resultado utilizándola es increíble: la masa se cocinó de una forma que el horno por sí mismo no es capaz de hacer; el borde de la pizza quedó esponjoso y crujiente (dejo una foto). Ahora probaré haciendo pan de varios tipos. Seguramente será también un resultado increíble. La súper recomiendo.

This is my first baking/pizza stone, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I am very pleased with it. I have had it for just over a month and have been baking homemade pizza on it, as well as artisan breads, and am very pleased with the way they all come out. I don't get the black char marks on the bottom of my pizza crust like I have seen in instructional videos for making pizza on a stone, but I suspect that is because I cook my pizzas on parchment paper. It's heavy enough to do the job, but it isn't so heavy that I have trouble taking it out of the oven if I need to. It seems very sturdy and like it won't be easily damaged (although of course I don't plan to drop it!). I have a stainless steel peel and it hasn't scratched it or damaged it at all. Haven't tried baking on the barbecue with it yet but am looking forward to trying that! Edit: August 28/20 - I have now used it on the barbecue to bake a loaf of bread, and it worked great. Re: sticking - I have been using parchment paper under everything I bake on it except for a couple of frozen pizzas, and one frozen pizza stuck a bit. But I hadn't even put cornmeal under it, so I consider that user error.

Arrived looking like it had been kicked around the depot floor, the pizza stone box had punched a hole through the outer box and the stone was badly damaged. Returned.