Himalayan Salt Stones in the oven?

[laurence Russo]

So the conversation came up about laying on the oven floor 4 Himalayan salt stones at startup. Would these take the gradual rise to 850f and what would they impart to a pizza crust that cooked on them? Anyone tried this?

[pacoast]

I'm not sure that this is a good idea. If you do proceed, at least cure the salt very gradually with eye protection & a fire extinguisher at hand. While salt has a fairly high melting temperature around 800C, your salt slab isn't going to be pure. There are surely some impurities, excipients or different forms of salt that could seriously depress the melting temperature. Molten salt is nasty stuff. You may get flying pieces too if there are any trapped pockets of water or air & it's a relatively soft "stone" to begin with.

Bottom line, I wouldn't risk it in my kitchen & recommend that you use a cast iron skillet or pizza stone instead. I'd hate to hear that you tried it with bad results.

.

[laurence Russo]

This may be the wrong section for this question

Not sure if there would be a problem as you describe. These salt slabs are 2" thick and are used all the time to cook on...or off of. They get heated in ovens to 500 then brought out to the table so you can cook fish/sushi/meat right off the salt slab. I may test it out in the B-Q to see how much heat I can get it infused with. I am not at all worried it would explode as long as I brought it up to temp slowly.

Thanks for the caution though

[pacoast]

Interesting. I was unaware of this use, around here this type of salt is often hollowed out and made into table lamps.

Rock salt is an unusual choice for a hot serving "platter". If they were cured slowly to drive out any moisture, they should be safe from exploding & salt can hold heat well. But it would impart a salty taste to everything that you had on it & might also transfer tastes/odours from spills. And it would be relatively fragile. To me, it just doesn't seem like an attractive material for this use.

Perhaps someone else has tried this & will tell us about their experience.

[UnConundrum]

I've never gotten around to trying it, but I'd like to.  Check out http://www.salttraders.com/Detail.bok?no=124

[laurence Russo]

Cooking on the salt slab is the whole point of the discussion we had in front of our pizza oven the other evening.

I have a neighbor that fishes off the San Francisco Bay quite a great deal and he thought heating the Himalayan stones in the pizza oven would give his fish a better sear since the oven can go much higher than is home oven.

I put the question out here because I don't own the stones and thought if someone had done it than I could report back that it was worth a go with his next catch.  I'll more than likely give it a go.

LR