My pizza stone just exploded in the oven.

[Wayne]

What in the world?  We were cookin some thin crust pizzas on it and abotu halfway through the second one "POP!".  Opened the oven and the stone broke into 4 pieces.  We just butted the pieces back together and finished cooking the second and then did the third and they came out just fine, but any idea why the stone would explode?

[Steve]

Poor workmanship and/or materials?

Sounds like the stone had a trapped pocket of moisture... when heated, the moisture expanded and "pop"!!  

[Wayne]

That's what I was saying that it was probably just a low quality but it still works fine.  This isn't the first time it was used but I guess it was just ready to give out.

[cliff]

If the pizza stone is wet or even a little damp it could explode or break in the oven, when heated.                   cliff              
               

[Samm]

Pizza stone care
Never wash your stone with water just scrape clean.
never put cold stone in hot oven let it come up to temp with the oven.

[Wayne]

Yeah that's the confusing thing.  We never did anything like that.  All I can figure is that it had a flaw in it somewhere.

[Dave]

Wayne,

Low-quality pizza stones tend to explode like that.  Can I make a suggestion?  What I did is find some unglazed quarry tiles, each 8" square and a half-inch thick, and put them on the bottom rack of my oven.  Lots of people do this, and it's worked fine; I've had it for years.

Make sure if you get the quarry tiles to get unglazed (the glazed ones have chemicals in them that will be released when heated) and also make sure to get them a half-inch thick, not anything less.  I tried quarter-inch thick tiles at first, and they exploded on me.  Went to half-inch, and everything's been fine.

Dave

[canadianbacon]

I bought a pizza stone and paddle for $24.99 Canadian, about $19 American,
it worked great for about a month, but last week, while doing some pizza, I made 3 that night  - had a gang over and we were drinking and partying, anyway I was on my 2nd pizza and was about to put it into the oven and noticed the thing had split in 2.

Any pizza stone you buy that is not made with a fiberous material will indeed crack overtime, no matter how thick they are.  All professional ones from my reading are very heavily fibered, - just like cement is in certain areas where there is a lot of temperature distortion.

Anyway live and learn, thing is, I can't afford the $229 price tag of a pizza stone that is intended for the pros.  It will never crack, but yikes, what a pricetag.

I think I'm going to go with Steve's idea of putting 4 unglazed tiles together, - this seems the thing to do.

Btw, this is the 2nd pizza stone to crack on me.  The last one I bought was several years ago and it cracked after a few weeks.

By the way, if you are baking at low temps of say 425, your stone may last you much longer, or forever ( doubht that but who knows ) ... I use my stone at 550 temps for extended periods of time, - for example the night my latest pizza stone broke the oven had been going for about 2 hours.

Mark.

[RoadPizza]

You could probably glaze the stone before using by brushing it with olive oil and baking it all day first (that's sort of what we do to new pizza ovens - we coat the bricks first and heat them up for 8 hours).

[Pierre]

Exactly that's what I've heard also. The stones in the deck ovens are seasoned before their first usage by burning them in overnight.

It also provides for that "Flavour" that we all remember from new Yorker Pizzerias.

pierre

[mama mia]

... another reason I turned to the screen...