If you love baking bread, pizza, cookies and all the rest, you know how costly the utensils can be. Maybe you’ve already heard about Fibrament baking stones and how they bake glorious pastries which are hard to achieve when you just an ordinary baking pan.
If you prefer crusty artisan or hearth-styled pastries, then a Fibrament stone does a fantastic job producing them. You can purchase a quality one at castelegance.com.
When you put the dough into your oven, heat from the walls of the oven will begin to penetrate it through convection (where hot air circulates inside the oven chamber). As a result, the pizza, cake or bread you’re baking will acquire enough heat to drive moisture out of it.
However, when you put the pastry on a baking stone, the oven heat will circulate through conduction as well. In other words, there has to be direct contact between what you’re baking and the pizza stone. Conduction allows the heat to be transferred quickly and efficiently from the stone to the dough mass. This will cause the interior of the dough to rise and water to evaporate before the hard crust can ever settle on the surface and limit its expansion. The bread or pizza will have a greater ”oven spring” as well as a crispier crust compared to the pan-baked dough.
Another point worth noting is that pizza stones tend to maintain constant oven temperature. This is very critical when you want your pastry to bake evenly. You see, the baking stone tends to increase the heat storing capacity (thermal mass) of the oven. So the moment the oven and stone are hot, the oven works less to keep the temperature constant. Once again, when you open the oven door to check the progress, you realize that the inside temperature of the oven will recover quicker than when you use a stone-less oven.
When you put the dough into your oven, heat from the walls of the oven will begin to penetrate it through convection (where hot air circulates inside the oven chamber). As a result, the pizza, cake or bread you’re baking will acquire enough heat to drive moisture out of it.
However, when you put the pastry on a baking stone, the oven heat will circulate through conduction as well. In other words, there has to be direct contact between what you’re baking and the pizza stone. Conduction allows the heat to be transferred quickly and efficiently from the stone to the dough mass. This will cause the interior of the dough to rise and water to evaporate before the hard crust can ever settle on the surface and limit its expansion. The bread or pizza will have a greater ”oven spring” as well as a crispier crust compared to the pan-baked dough.
Another point worth noting is that pizza stones tend to maintain constant oven temperature. This is very critical when you want your pastry to bake evenly. You see, the baking stone tends to increase the heat storing capacity (thermal mass) of the oven. So the moment the oven and stone are hot, the oven works less to keep the temperature constant. Once again, when you open the oven door to check the progress, you realize that the inside temperature of the oven will recover quicker than when you use a stone-less oven.
What type of stone do you need for this operation?
When people hear the words ”pizza stones” being mentioned, they imagine some hard-to-find stone which costs a fortune to acquire. However, the truth is that a baking stone can be something as simple as an unglazed terracotta tile selling at your nearest building supplies store. But of course several dedicated stoneware products are sold for that purpose, so you don’t have to restrict yourself to the use of unglazed terracotta tiles.
