Steel on Top of Stone. Happy with Results.

[pizza-in]

Hi Team,

I posted this it the Home Ovens sub-forum. As I think the key was stacking the steel on top of the stone, I thought I would post it here.

I had read that Cooks tested stones versus steels and found that, for an indoor kitchen oven, stacking the steel on the stone was best. Having some left over dough, I decided to give it a try. The results surprised me. All I did was preheat the stone and steel for 60 minutes at 550 and toss the pizza on. For an indoor home oven, the results surprised me. A few pict are below:

[TXCraig1]

How thick are the steel and stone? 60 min preheat may not be enough to fully saturate the mass.

[pizza-in]

How thick are the steel and stone? 60 min preheat may not be enough to fully saturate the mass.

Ahh! good point. Chatting with my bride, the preheat was probably more like 2+  hours. She reminded me I turned it on, we ate, and then I let go another hour or so. The long preheat may help explain the good results.

[miv]

Thinking about thermodynamics isn't the stone just increasing the thermal mass of the steel(there is some added convection/conductivity, but the stone is below the steel and thus below the pizza so it shouldn't make a difference)?
Hence the result should be the same if you increase the steel thickness/add another steel.

[T-bone]

It is an interesting idea. I was watching an America's test kitchen video on youtube recently where, I think the show was called gear heads, the gal cooked a pizza on a steel.  She then said she was going to try placing the steel on top of the stone the next time she made a pizza but she never tried that yet as far as I know.

I think the idea is that you preheat both for only one hour... just the same as if they were separated in the oven.  And I believe the benefit comes in when the pizza Cooks on the steel and you remove the pizza, the contact with the stone flows the heat from the stone into the steel and that reduces the amount of time that you have to wait for the steel to regain some of its lost heat between pizzas.

Edit.  Found the video. See the 12 minute 20 second mark.

[TXCraig1]

Maybe if you have a thin steel else it would take forever to pre-heat.

[Pizza_Not_War]

Did you do a pizza from same dough formula with just a steel?

[TXCraig1]

Thinking about thermodynamics isn't the stone just increasing the thermal mass of the steel(there is some added convection/conductivity, but the stone is below the steel and thus below the pizza so it shouldn't make a difference)?
Hence the result should be the same if you increase the steel thickness/add another steel.

Not exactly. Steel is ~17X as conductive as cordierite, so the stone can recharge the steel much faster than air/IR, but much slower than if it was a monolithic piece of steel.  Stacking also introduces at least some amount of air-gap which will slow heat transfer to some extent.

[TXCraig1]

Did you do a pizza from same dough formula with just a steel?

Who are you asking?

[Pizza_Not_War]

Who are you asking?

OP