A pizza stone is one of the best tools to bake perfect pizza at home, but it’s useless if you don’t know how to use it properly. To make perfectly crispy pizza, you need to preheat your pizza stone, and here’s how.
- Place the stone in the oven or grill
- Turn the oven or grill to the hottest temperature
- Let the stone preheat for at least 45 minutes to 1 hour
Preheat Pizza Stone or Not – Does It Really Matter?
The whole point of baking pizza on a pizza stone is that the hot stone helps crisp up the pizza. If the stone is not hot when you put the pizza on, you’ll end up with a soggy, uncooked pizza. It’s therefore essential to preheat your pizza stone.
A pizza stone works by retaining heat, that’s then used to bake the bottom of the pizza. This results in a nice and crispy pizza crust.
What a pizza stone is trying to do is simulate the environment in a
To get a result similar to a
In addition to not baking the pizza properly, placing a cold pizza stone into a hot oven may result in a cracked stone. Pizza stones are usually made from clay or ceramic, that’s prone to cracking from temperature shock. If you want to read more and learn how to prevent your pizza stone from cracking, check out this article.
At What Temperature Should I Preheat My Pizza Stone?
To get the right pizza crust consistency, nice and crispy on the outside, while still soft on the inside, the pizza has to be baked quickly. The only way to achieve this is in a blazing hot oven. A commercial
A pizza stone should be preheated at a minimum of 500°F (260°F), or as hot as your oven goes. The hotter the better!
What will happen if the pizza stone is not hot enough during baking is that you’ll end up with a soggy, or even raw pizza. Worst case scenario, the pizza will get stuck to the pizza stone, and you’ll end up with a huge mess.
The Temperature Will Drop When You Add Cold Pizza
Something worth mentioning is that the surface temperature of the pizza stone will drop when you add a pizza. The reason is that the cold (room temperature) pizza will cool down the stone. So if you’re baking many pizzas in a row, it’s important to let the pizza stone re-heat between the pizzas. Otherwise, each pizza will turn out less and less crispy.
How Long Does It Take to Preheat a Pizza Stone?
It takes around 45 minutes to 1 hour to preheat your pizza stone.
I’ve heard a lot of people discuss the need to preheat pizza stones for a full hour. Some claim that 15 minutes is sufficient, but from my experience that simply isn’t enough.
Preheating Experiment – How Long Does It Take?
To get to the bottom of this, I did an experiment. I tried baking four pizzas on a pizza stone preheated for different durations. Since I already knew the result of no preheating (that resulted in a cracked pizza stone and raw pizza the last time I tried…), I skipped that.
I baked all four pizzas for 6 minutes in 570°F (300°C), the highest temperature I could reach in my convection oven, with the broiler on.
| 15 minutes | For the first pizza, the edge got a little crispier than on a baking sheet, but it’s still almost completely pale. The middle of the pizza was very soft, not completely raw, but definitely not done. Clearly not enough heat for this pizza. |
| 30 minutes | The second pizza didn’t appear raw, but it wasn’t very crispy either. It also lacked any color and was completely white. Better but still not hot enough. |
| 45 minutes | The third pizza got some browning and was nice and crispy. The browning was even, unlike the first two pizzas. I was quite happy with the result, and this was pretty much what I expected to get from a pizza stone. |
| 60 minutes | The last pizza got slightly more color than the third and was also a little bit crispier. This was what I was looking for – perfect, crispy pizza |
From my test, I found that 60 minutes, or 1 hour, is the ideal time preheating time. There was a small difference between the 45-minute and the 60-minute pizza, but not a huge difference. So 45 minutes is okay, but if you have a full hour to preheat your stone, that’s preferable!
Baking Many Pizzas
In my experience, it’s okay to bake 2 pizzas right after each other. But if you’re baking more than that, I recommend giving the stone 10-15 minutes to come back up to temperature after every two pizzas.
If you have a large pizza stone, you can place each consecutive pizza on the opposite side of the stone. Then the side that’s not in use has time to heat up before the next pizza.
How to Preheat your Pizza Stone – Step by Step
It’s really easy to preheat your pizza stone, and the method is pretty much the same whether it’s in the oven or on the grill.
Preheat the Pizza Stone in an Oven
- Place the pizza stone in the cold oven. It’s important to put in the pizza stone while the oven is still cold, to prevent the stone from cracking. It’s also safer to position the stone in the oven when it’s not hot. Then let it slowly come to a temperature with the oven.
If you have a broiler in your oven, the best place to put the pizza stone is as close to the broiler as you can. The reason is that the broiler will help the pizza stone get even hotter than the air temperature of the oven. - Turn on the oven in the hottest setting. You want both the oven and the pizza stone to get as hot as possible, you therefore want to crank up the oven as hot as possible. And if you have If you have a broiler, turn that on too, to make the pizza stone even hotter.
- Let the pizza stone preheat for at least 45 minutes to 1 hour. To make sure the stone is hot enough, it needs 45 minutes, or ideally a full hour. Don’t be impatient and skip this step! That will result in soggy, raw pizza.
Preheat the Pizza Stone on a Grill
- Place the pizza stone on the cold grill. You should place the pizza stone on the grill while it’s still cold to prevent it from cracking. The grill will also be very hot, and it’s easy to burn your fingers if you were to put the pizza stone in place when it’s hot!
It’s a good idea to place the pizza stone on one side of the grill and heat it with indirect heat. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a pizza stone that’s too hot, and the bottom of the pizza may burn before the cheese is melted. - Heat the grill. If you’re using a gas grill, turn on all the burners, but leave the burner, or burners, right under the pizza stone on 50-75%, while you turn the rest up to 100%. You don’t want too much heat right under the pizza stone. Rather let it come slowly to temperature using indirect heat. If you’re using coal. You should also not place too much coal directly under the stone, for the same reason.
- Let the pizza stone preheat for at least 45 minutes to 1 hour. To make sure the stone is hot enough, it needs 45 minutes to an hour.
Conclusion
The importance of preheating your pizza stone should not be neglected. Without proper preheating, you’ll end up with raw, pizza and potentially a mess. And you’ll end up wasting both time and money on a pizza stone since you use it incorrectly.
To achieve perfect, crispy pizza in your home oven, you need to bake the pizza at the hottest temperature possible. This means that you should use the hottest setting your oven can reach. You also need to preheat for at least 45 minutes, or ideally an hour, to make sure the pizza stone is hot enough. It’s also important to place the pizza stone in the oven, or grill, when it’s cold, to prevent cracking, and unnecessary risk of hurting yourself.
With proper preheating, and the use of a pizza stone, you’ll bake the best pizza you’ll ever try in your home oven!
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