Baking is so much fun. There’s always something new to try, plus you get to eat the results (well, unless they’re too burnt–we’ve all been there). On top of that, there are lots of different cool tools. I’ve talked about some of these before, but there are two additional ones that happily are in our kitchen: a pizza stone and a baking steel.

A Lifetime of Pizza

Why are those two tools in our kitchen? It’s all in a name: Pizza.

Like most other kids, I loved pizza growing up. Back then, it was simple: Your Mom buys the Chef Boyardee pizza box from the store and you follow the instructions. The big tools you need are really just a bowl to mix up the ingredients, some oil, and a round baking pan to put the pizza on. Some minutes later, the pizza comes out.

Eventually, the Chef Boyardee pizza gave way to ordering pizza. College and bachelor life being what they are, Domino’s and Papa John’s were weekly visitors. Especially in Colorado, when I lived right near Domino’s, I could get a hot, tasty pizza with just a phone call.

I did eventually start making my own pizzas at home, using a round baking pan again. You can easily find a basic dough recipe, make up some sauce, and top that with some pepperoni. You throw it in the oven for about 20 minutes, and you’re good to go. Definitely good enough for a quick meal.

Then, after a couple of years, a friend who sold Pampered Chef showed me their pizza stone and things started to change.

Pizza Stone

The Pampered Chef pizza stone is just fun. I (now we) have an old-school one, where there are no built-in handles but you put the round stone on its own metal rack inside the oven. Here’s what that looks like:

Stealing a line from Pampered Chef’s website, their stoneware is “natural clay bakeware”. To me, the texture is strange: Even when you put cooking oil on top of it, it kind of puts your nerves on edge when you run your fingers across it. If you’ve run your fingers across the pages of a book just right and gotten a texture-driven shiver before, it’s kind of like that.

Like I said, though, it’s a fun tool. It is the right size to make a large pizza. We have used it to make not only pizza, but also cookies. The chocolate chip cookies we’ve made on the stone come out nice and fluffy versus just putting them on a metal sheet pan.

Over time, the pizza stone develops a dark patina. It starts at the edge and goes inwards. From what I understand, this is due to the oils and any other fats “seasoning” the stone. Seasoning the stone supposedly makes it cook better, and we’ve seen that over continued use. I haven’t been concerned about the science of why this is, but I’m sure it’s out there if you search for it.

After years of using our basic dough and sauce recipes, I began reading more of Ken Forkish’s “The Elements of Pizza”. Adjusting these recipes for the pizza stone, which has a temperature threshold of 450F, produced decent pizzas. To really follow the recipes, though, which call out going up to 550F, we had to try the other option: a baking steel.

Baking Steel

I did a little research to see what the best baking steel was. With this being a niche item, there aren’t a ton of competitors out there. We got ours from Baking Steel, the same one that Mr. Forkish’s book recommends. It took a few weeks to get here, which is longer than the seller describes, but it finally made it. After a few attempts, we have had some very excellent pizzas using the steel.

Even though we now had this cool new toy, we decided to keep our stone. It was, after all, fully capable of cooking decent pizzas and other items. Plus, we’re still learning how to use the steel, and figuring out what its best applications are (aside from dang good pizza).

In Comparison

So, knowing that we’ve had good to great results with each of these tools, which is the better one? The answer is really: It depends.

Temperature Range

As mentioned above, Pampered Chef indicates their stone is good up to 450F. This is totally fine for many of the goods that you can use it for, including cookies and breads. If you want to go above that range, you risk your stone breaking or being damaged.

The baking steel, on the other hand, is completely fine in a 550F oven. It’s OK to use under a broiler. You can chill it and use it to keep foods on top of it cold. Supposedly you can use it with dry ice too to make it really cold, but I’m not sure I’d dare that one myself.

If you really want a wide temperature range, the baking steel is most certainly the winner.

Heat Retention

This one’s a little tricky, as we only keep the pizza stone in the oven for up to 20 minutes where the baking steel might be in there heating up for 45 minutes or so. Also, we leave the baking steel in the oven after we scoop pizzas off it, while the stone we just pull out completely. Generally, though, I’d say the baking steel retains its heat longer.

Why would this even matter? When in Switzerland once for work, the vendor took us out to a restaurant where they brought the meat out to you on a hot stone. You let the meat sit on there ’til you were happy with how much it was cooked. If you have a baking steel that retains heat well, this would let you duplicate that experience, albeit with a much bigger surface.

On the flip side, because the baking steel can be chilled too, its cold temperature retention is important. If it can stay cold for a long time, it’s great for a meat or cheese plate. The pizza stone just isn’t meant for that.

The baking steel wins another category.

Durability

The pizza stone is made of clay. You drop it, it’ll break.

The baking steel is made of steel. 15 pounds of it, for the size we purchased. You drop it, chances are you or your floor will break (which is why I’m darned careful to hold onto it around the kids).

Victory to the baking steel.

Texture

OK, so it’s a bit silly to judge texture as long as your cooking surface works. But the pizza stone is fun. Yes, its feel is weird, but it kind of gives a life to it with that natural surface.

The baking steel has a wonderful, smooth metal surface. Its great for cooking, but it doesn’t have as good a feel as the stone.

One for the pizza stone!

Cleanability

The pizza stone is great, but you do not clean it with soap–just water and a scraper. From what our contact told us, you put the stone in soapy water long enough and it’ll taste like soap. Then you just have to throw it away.

The baking steel is happy with soap and water, and can definitely take a good scrubbing. It’s steel, after all.

Honestly, though, our experience with both of these has been that they release any baked-on items pretty easily, so let’s call this one a draw.

Uses

Last, but far from least, is which one is the best at baking.

Our experience with the pizza stone has been that it excels at making nice, fluffy cookies, and does a decent job with breads as well. The various other items we’ve made on there have also turned out good.

The pizza steel, on the other hand, is our go-to for pizzas. We haven’t yet tried it with breads, even though there are recipes for this, so I can’t speak to that.

Winners and . . . Winners

So with all that comparison said and done, which is the best tool for your kitchen? If you’re like us, it’s both. We bake such a variety of things, and enjoy great pizza so much, that each has earned its place in our kitchen.

For you? If you’re primarily cooking pizzas or perhaps breads, and you’d like something that can be used in both cold and really hot environments, just go for the baking steel. If you’re baking a variety of goods that need modest heat, the pizza stone will serve you very well.

The real winners, though, are those who get to eat whatever’s been baking. Pizza . . . no, stromboli . . . no, pretzels . . . (Cookie Monster voice) coookiiiieeees . . .