Cleaning My Stone

[rcbaughn]

I recently saw a video on Youtube of a woman washing her stone in a baking soda/water paste to remove grime. I was wondering if this is a smart practice since certain liquids, such as soaps, can sink into the stone and give the things you bake on it off flavors. My stone looks absolutely horrible, it is basically one big black grease covered piece of rock. It doesn't smoke, but it does make it a lot harder to clean larger grime off of and is giving my kitchen a burnt smell when I preheat it for a long period of time. If anyone has any tips let me know. It is only a $20 stone, but I'd rather not have to replace it every time that it gets to this point of being dirty. I also don't really want to use the cleaning cycle, but if that is the only viable option I guess I can do so. Thanks guys.

-Cory

[scott123]

You wouldn't have to worry about this with steel plate

Seriously, though, baking soda isn't going to add any off flavors to a stone, so it might be worth a shot. Just make sure you dry the stone thoroughly after getting it wet. Is it cordierite or cement-ish?  If it's cordierite you can probably heat it after drying, but cement has to be cured.

I love lightly sanding my soapstone, but I might be concerned if scraping the stone might weaken it structurally, like scratches on glass. It's probably fine to sand.

[Don K]

I periodically put my stones on an outdoor gas grill and get them nice and hot to burn everything off.

My oldest stone is pretty much solid black now, but it doesn't give my kitchen a burnt smell at all. It was just a cheap stone from Bed Bath and Beyond but is still my favorite one to use. I think it works better now that it is black than it did new. The only thing that I ever use to clean it is water and sometimes a stiff bristle brush.

[norma427]

Cory,

My stone at home and market are all marked up.  In my opinion I think they perform better that way.  All I do is take a dull knife and scrap off any burnt stuff that might be on them.  For both stones I have taken a mild bleach solution on a rag and gone over them.  At market I do that every week after the oven cools down.  I don’t even know if that is okay, but it seems to work.

Norma

[anton-luigi]

Well,  i did what was suggested to me in the "old stone oven" thread I started.  I ran my cleaning cycle with the stone in it,  holy cow,  there was tons of blackness on my stone before,  it came out looking like it did when it was new.  run it in your oven's cleaning cycle.

[Ev]

See? I told you it would work!