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Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone explain why the bottom layer is stone and not steel, is it more marketing than anything?

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/10/pizza-hack-baking-copper...

I'm guessing it is due to the temperature the oven can reach. A normal oven can only hit 500F but once you get much higher than that the steel works too well, casing the crust to burn before the toppings (or top crust) are properly cooked.

I recently retired my steel after moving due to how much hotter my new oven gets. With the steel sheet you had burnt curst with little to no browning on the top. Switching back to my stone evened things out.

Yup. Source: I burnt a few pizzas on the baking steel on a grill.

Ah thanks, I don’t feel so bad now. I had no luck after moving to a steel because he grill broke our pizza stone.

>little to no browning on the top.

Did you have a sheet of steel above your pizza? If anything, if your steel is too hot to have underneath the pizza, put it above it and use it to radiate heat, vs the ovens regular convection heat transfer.

My original question was more if having steel on both sides works or not. What if the fire source is above the top layer, so the top side (the one that doesnt contact the pizza) is slightly warmer than the bottom layer (that does touch the pizza.)

Kenji has some other articles about baking steel that mention it's excellent ability to radiate head downward and cook the top of the pizza.

Personally, I make pizza in the oven in my home and avoid baking steel because at high temperatures the seasoning (oil) burns off.

I agree, a real baking steel works very well for this. I have one I use as a griddle, and sometimes in the oven.

The Kettle Pizza came with a much thinner version of steel, that was still heavy as hell. The radiant effect of the kettle version wasn't that great. And mine rusted through in less than one season, and it lived inside my kettle.

Theres probably a cost/ durability element. You want that thick metal plate to be stainless steel (expensive), or protected in some way (slightly less expensive), wood ash is caustic, so could eat though unprotected steel quite quickly if not properly maintained.

It may be possible an over enthusiastic bbqer to overheat the metal plate, I don't know how likely that would be in real life though.

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