I Tested the Baking Steel by Making Dozens of Pizzas—It's Indispensable

I came out with the early word on Baking Steel, a product which, at the time, was in Kickstarter mode trying to raise enough money for its first run. Thanks to pizza heads like you, they managed to blow past their initial investment requirements by several thousand dollars. By all accounts, founder Andris Lagsdin was in over his head trying to keep up with demand on that first run. This is good news for him, and even better news for home piemakers, because I've got to tell you: This is the most impressive home pizza product I've ever tested. To test out the Baking Steel, I made over a dozen pies, as well as various recipes, and in every single case, it produced results superior to anything I've ever been able to make with a standard stone.

The Tests

• New York-Style Pizza Test: I baked two New York-style pizzas per the Baking Steel's instructions, placing the steel at the bottom of the oven with the oven at its highest setting, and baking it for 45 minutes. I also baked a pizza on a baking stone for comparison.
• Stone and Steel Test: To emulate a traditional pizza oven, I placed a baking stone on the rack with the steel on the rack underneath it. The idea is that radiant energy from the stone would help cook the top of the pizza faster, creating better charring on the top surface, and hopefully reducing cook time even more. 
• Broiler Test: I used the Baking Steel with my broiler to cook a pizza.
• Neapolitan-Style Pizza Test: I baked a couple of Neapolitan-style pies to see how the Baking Steel performed with the thin crust.

What We Learned

What Is a Baking Steel?

The folks over on the pizzamaking.com forum have been talking about using steel plates to bake pizza for a number of years, but the concept really hit the big time when Nathan Myhyrvold recommended it in his uber-cookbook Modernist Cuisine. After seeing a demo of the process, Andris Lagsdin, a former employee at Todd English's Figs chain of pizzerias realized, hey, maybe there's a business opportunity here. Thus was born the Baking Steel, a 1/4-inch, 15-pound plate of food-grade steel designed to be used in your oven as a replacement for a traditional pizza stone.

On paper, the idea makes sense. Metal conducts heat better than stone and it stores more heat per unit volume than stone—both key characteristics to creating a pizza that cooks up both light and crisp with the characteristic hole structure and char that you look for in a good Neapolitan or New York-style pie.

Stone Vs. Steel: New York-Style Pizza

To start with, I made two New York-style pies baking them exactly as the instructions on the Baking Steel recommend—the steel in the bottom of the oven, the oven on full blast for 45 minutes. My basic New York Style Pizza recipe gets baked on a stone in a 500°F oven, which results in a bake time of around 12 to 15 minutes.

With a stone, if I crank my oven up to 550°F (not possible for all home cooks, hence the 500°F temperature in the recipe), I can bake a pie in about 7 or 8 minutes.

A stone in a 550° oven will stabilize at around 500 to 525°F, as you can see.

The steel, on the other hand, stabilizes at around 450°F (though in some tests it peaked at closer to 500°F). This is due to the steel's radiative properties. It's constantly giving off heat even as it absorbs it, causing it to stabilize at a temperature that's slightly cooler than the air around it.

I measured the air temp in my oven with a dry bulb thermometer that registered between 500°F and 550°F, depending on the oven's cycle.

Now you may be thinking, wouldn't a lower floor temperature lead to longer cooking times and therefore an inferior pizza? The answer is no, and it has to do with the relative conductivity of the two materials. Even though the steel is cooler than the stone, it is far superior at transferring its energy to whatever is placed on top of it than the stone, which more than accounts for the lower temperature.

It's the same principle that allows you to stick your hand in a 212°F oven while sticking it into a pot of boiling 212°F water would scald it.

The pizza cooked on a baking stone came out the way my New York pies usually do (that is, excellent), with some nice bubbling, melted cheese, and a golden-brown crust with a few darker spots, all in about 8 minutes.

My baking steel-baked pie, on the other hand, was brown and bubbly in just six minutes, with a more appealing, spotty browned crust.

Here's where you begin to see some real differences

With the stone, the undercarriage was a relatively even brown with a few slightly lighter and darker spots. It was moderately crisp, with a fair amount of chew.

The undercarriage of the steel-cooked pie, on the other hand, was a near-flawless example of what a New York slice should look like, with a mottled brown crust and plenty of dark and light spots. On top of that, it was supremely crisp.

It Baked Up Bubbly Dough

How does the baking surface affect the hole structure? Well, those crust holes develop when air and water vapor trapped inside the dough matrix suddenly expand upon heating in a phenomenon known as oven spring. The faster you can transfer energy to the dough, the bigger those glorious bubbles will be, and the airier and more delicate the crust.

Stone showed decent structure here—better than 99% of what you'd get out in the wild—but still a bit flat toward the rim.

Let's see what we get with steel:

Whoah, bubbles! Check out those holes. This is a fine crust indeed, the kind that makes you want to pick up your neighbor's bones and eat them (P.S. don't do that, it's rude).

So just straight out of the box used exactly as directed, it shows a few pretty clear advantages over a regular stone.

Using the Baking Steel with a Pizza Stone

With the baking stone on the oven rack above the steel, I slung another pie to see what would happen. The pie stuck to the peel a tiny bit as I was transferring it, which is why it's not perfectly round. Don't you hate when that happens?

Nonetheless, the browning was indeed superior, with an even poofier edge crust and some great blistered bubbles. Unfortunately, most folks don't have two stones. No matter, there's an even better way to cook pies:

Baking Stone Plus Broiler = A Winning Combo

This is where things really took a turn for the better. The skillet-broiler method was my go-to method for cooking pies, but you can consider me officially converted to the Baking Steel-broiler method.

For this pie (and a number of other pies since), I heated up the Baking Steel on the second-to-top shelf of my oven set at 550°F until it was holding a steady temperature (this took about half an hour, the steel held steady at around 500°F). Then just before sliding the pie into the oven, I cranked up the broiler to high. (I have an oven with a broiler on the top shelf. If your broiler is under the oven, you'd have to preheat the steel under the broiler).

To ensure that the broiler didn't cycle off (it has a thermostat that shuts it off if the oven gets too hot), I kept the oven door barely cracked with a metal spoon.

The first pie I baked cooked in just under four minutes, and the half dozen I've baked using this method since have all been in the three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half minute range.

It Baked a Decent Neapolitan Pizza

Here's the thing: You're never going to be able to produce a perfect Neapolitan-style pie in a home oven. They simply don't get hot enough. A traditional Neapolitan pie is baked in a wood-fired oven with a floor temperature of 700 to 800°F, and an air temp that can push 1,000°F near the dome. Pies cook in about 90 seconds. You need this kind of temp to get the supremely blistered, poofy, black-and-white beauties that the finest Neapolitan joints produce.

That said, there ain't no harm in trying to get as close as you can, right?

I baked a few pies using my standard Neapolitan pizza dough recipe. It's pretty basic—finely milled flour, water, yeast, and salt. That's it. Like my last New York-style pies, I baked it on the second from the top shelf (no room to fit a pie if I put the steel on the very top shelf), with the broiler cranked full blast.

The toppings were simple and traditional: sauce (made with crushed San Marzanos and salt), buffalo mozzarella, olive oil, salt, and fresh basil leaves.

Again, this is where the Baking Steel really shines—producing a fantastic crisp, thin, spotty crust.

And the holes look pretty great too—a thin layer of browned crust, with plenty of super-airy tender bubbles inside.

The Verdict

I've been making the finest indoor-oven pies I've ever made since I got the Baking Steel. Better than what I can get with my inch-thick stone. More consistent than what I get from my skillet-broiler method (my previous go-to). And of course, easier than setting up the also-awesome KettlePizza insert on my outdoor grill. By all accounts, this is the answer I've been waiting for to produce consistently awesome pizza over and over, straight out of the box.

Bonus points: on top of its clear thermal superiority, it's also far more durable (how many of you have cracked a pizza stone, raise your hands?). And, as I found out after I laid it to rest on top of my stovetop after my first day of pie making, it fits over two burners perfectly, allowing it to double as a stovetop griddle. Which, of course, Baking Steel is well aware of, as they've since come out with a reversible griddle.

Baking Steel The Original Baking Steel

$129 at Amazon $119 at Bakingsteel.com

Pros

The Baking Steel kept a steady temperature, heated up fast, and baked up gorgeous, leopard-spotted pizzas—New York or Neapolitan, it aced them all. It also retained heat quite well, making it easy to bake multiple pies in a row.

Cons

There's not much to be said here, other than it's a bit pricey.

Key Specs

• Material: Steel
• Dimensions: 14 by 16.25 inches
• Weight: 16 pounds

FAQs

How do you clean a Baking Steel?

This post on the Baking Steel's site has step-by-step instructions on how to clean a baking steel (there's also a video!).

What's the best way to store a Baking Steel?

You should store your Baking Steel in a clean area or on the bottom rack of an oven. Baking Steel also sells this handy storage sleeve.

Do you have a review of the Baking Steel Griddle?

Why, yes! We do. You can read our review of the Baking Steel Griddle here.

Why We're the Experts

• J. Kenji López-Alt is the former culinary director of Serious Eats and still moonlights as a culinary consultant for the site.
• He's the author of the James Beard award-winning cookbooks The Food Lab and The Wok.
• For this piece, he baked over 10 pizzas across three styles to compare baking stones to baking steels.
• We've since reviewed pizza steels, and the Baking Steel aced our tests.