"Kevin Vang" wrote in message
t...

...if you are going to get serious about baking bread
(and pizza!) you really need a stone, but you don't need to spend a lot
of money on one. Just go to your local building center, and get any
smooth surfaced stone or ceramic tiles, enough to cover most of one oven
rack with a few inches to spare around the outside to leave room for air
circulation. The thicker the tiles, the better. Then just leave them
there forever. Seriously, never take them out. The additional thermal
mass will help your oven maintain a constant temperature, especially if
you are the kind of guy who likes to open the door and peek a lot. You
might even want a second layer of tiles to put on the bottom of the
oven....

Ditto all that. However, for those who have never used a stone, there are a
couple of things to get used to. The temperature sensor in your oven
measures air temperature. Ceramics are not very good conductors. This,
combined with the thermal mass of the stone, means that it will take
considerably longer to come to temperature than the air inside the oven.
Preheat your oven as usual, but give it an extra 10 or 15 minutes for the
stone to heat up.

Baking directly on the stone requires a bit of experimentation. Results
will vary somewhat depending on the footprint size, thickness, and moisture
content of a loaf of bread or a pizza. There's no good alternative to trial
and error.....well, actually, there's none at all. Anything cooked or baked
in a container will also behave a bit differently if placed on the stone as
compared to on a rack.

Also, home ovens never heat evenly.....there are always relatively hot and
cool spots. The presence of the stone changes convection patterns inside
the oven, which means that the hot and cool spots will move. This won't
make a great deal of difference for most things.....especially those that
are cooked covered for a long time anyway.....but it can be critical for
some.

As with most things in cooking, none of this is terribly important if haute
cuisine means frozen pizzas and tater-tot casserole (both of which I'll eat
with gusto), but the difference between life-sustaining and awesome is in
attention to detail.

Wolfgang
and QUIT OPENING THE DAMN DOOR!