Pizza stone vs. Pizza Screen

[friz78]

Tonight I made two pizzas because I wanted to try out my new pizza screen.  Up until tonight I've been working exclusively with a pizza stone and was anxious to experiment with the screen as well.

I would love to hear feedback from anyone with a preference on a screen vs. stone.  Tonight's experiment yielded a much better pizza with the stone, but this was only my first attempt with the screen.  Here are some differences between the two techniques I used tonight - 

Pizza stone - with the pizza that I made with the stone, I put the stone on a lower level in my oven and used a tile "ceiling" to trap in the heat.  The pizza was excellent and cooked almost perfectly (it's never TOTALLY perfect!!).

Pizza peel - I did not use the tile ceiling when cooking the second pizza on the pizza screen.   I also cooked the pizza on a middle rack instead of a lower rack.  The resulting crust was less crisp and a bit "tougher"in terms of chew.  Also, the bottom part of the crust was overcooked, yet still lacked the crispiness of the pizza stone pizza. 

I would love to hear from the proponents of the peel or the stone.  Especially interested in any advice on how to get the peel to perform better.

Friz

[canadianbacon]

pizza screen good - if used in a professional pizza place it's placed into the oven, which is 100 % tile which means amazing amount of heat..... so it's *almost* on the tile... so baking is great.

Screen in your oven..... at home, ..... without tile down......... nowhere near as good, there's no "sudden rush " of heat to the
bottom of the dough.... so it's not great.

Pizza stone ? ... wins all the time, your dough is exposed to the stone and is burnt to a crisp right away......

think of it this way, - which makes your finger pull back faster ? ..... putting it into a VERY hot oven for a few seconds, putting something in, or touching a HOT pizza stone...............

Pizza stone of course........ your finger sees the diff in temp, and jumps ! ... and so does the pizza dough.

Pizza stone wins hands down.

[Randy]

Not me my stone is getting dusty in the closet.  Screnns make great pizza if you use them without the stone on the very lowest rack.

Randy

[duckjob]

I use my screen in conjunction with a stone, with my oven, I find that it gives me the right amount of crispyness on the bottom. If I cook directly on the stone it burns to quickly, and if I use just a screen then the bottom doesn't get cooked enough. This is just my oven though. I have cooked pizzas in other peoples ovens with just a screen and had good results. FYi, I am using 6x6 1/2" unglazed quarry tiles in my oven.

http://www.duckjob.net/pizza/pizzatiles.jpg

[canadianbacon]

Hi "DuckJob" ... and again I'm not touching that nickname LOL 

I wish I had the problem you do with the pie burning that fast..... if it touches the brick....

this brings up a good question........... do the tiles you are using  hold that much more heat than my small 12" pizza stone ?

perhaps the overall sq.footage of tiles really puts out that much more heat, because there are so many more of them.

Kind of like when you go to the mall on a very hot day, - there's miles of paved parking lot, and the heat is so extreme..... perhaps
it's kind of the same thing......

I'm really thinking now of finally getting my butt into gear and getting my oven lined full of stone.....

thanks for the pic.

Mark

[duckjob]

The size may have something to do with it. Also these tiles are about 1/2" thick, which is thicker than most pizza stones, at least the cheap one that I used to have. I've got them on the second to lowest rack, and the heating element is right underneath it which might have something to do with it. If you wanted to get tiles like that in your oven, just measure  the space you need to cover and if there is a home depot around you, they will cut the tiles for you. I spent about $5 doing that to my oven. I work for HD though, so no tile cut charge for me

[canadianbacon]

hey Brian,

I should get my butt over to HomeDepot....  and you are right about the thickness,
the pizza stone i have is pretty thin, in fact it cracked on the 2nd pizza back I did.

A buddy of mine bought tiles and said they were super cheap,,, so I should get some asap.

thanks for the info.

Mark

[DKM]

I use either depending on mood.  I like using them together quite a bit..

DKM

[Ian]

I abandoned tiles a number of years ago in favor of a piece of granite countertop (turned so the rough side is up) cut to fit the oven. If you go to a custom tile/countertop store they always have scraps they'll cut and sell you cheap. It's thicker than tile so holds the heat better, stronger than tile so lasts longer and is easier to insert/remove from the oven.

BTW, Mark, I got my SD300 yesterday!!

[canadianbacon]

Hi Ian !

good going on the SD300 !, you just bought a top rated camera !

Image quality is amazing, and so is video mode.

Btw, do NOT forget to go into "manual" mode and "P" for so many groovy functions !

I shoot in "P" on my PowerShot G2 all the time.... in "P" mode I can choose ISO 50, - this creates the least grainy images,
and is really good for prints.... 

Make sure to ALWAYS shoot at the highest resolution on your camera.  - that's a basic rule anyone worth their salt will tell ya.
If you don't shoot at the highest res, then you are not taking advantage of the camera's strengths.
Also make sure you are shooting in at least "fine" mode ( compression )  Extra fine is the highest the camera will go and some say they
can tell the difference but I can't .  I shoot in fine mode as "extra fine" will cut the number of images by half on your sd card.

What else.... oh yeah "P" mode enables you to "FORCE" the flash.....

In auto mode, the camera will shoot the flash when it sees fit, and won't shoot the flash if it thinks there is enough light.
Shooting in "P" mode enables you to "force" the flash - push the button so you see the flash symbol stay on your camera LCD.... now you can
shoot in an area where it may be light, but you want to make absolutely sure the flash fires.
A great example of this is when you shoot somebody against s a window........ without forcing the flash, the camera will shoot the image
without flash, and then your subject is dark, because the camera has detected the light from the window, and is fooled..... so it doesn't fire the flash.

anyway blah blah blah.  You have fun with your new camera !
:-)

Mark

[snowdy]

i had some left over dough and was jonesing for some pizza tonight so i decided to make a 10 inch.

I left my stone at my parents house though when i was making the family pizza over there on superbowl.

All i had left was a crappy 12 pizza pan..

it actually came out awesome... i left it in the pan for about 75% of the bake time... then using a spatula i picked it up and put it direclty on the lower oven rack with no pan.. left it in another 5 minutes.

It came out nice and golden brown and crispy on the bottom, similar to how my stone cooks it but less dried out.

Is this similar to what i'd get if i just used a screen for the entire time?