Customer Reviews

Old Stone 4461 16-Inch Round Oven Pizza Stone

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I bought two of these, despite their relatively high price. I wanted to be able to cook two large pizzas at once for entertaining, so nobody waits slobbering while others eat their pizza.

I've made pizza twice and have not been disappointed. The stones are fairly soft and would scratch easily with sharp steel implements, so I'd avoid using them. The sone's porosity means it will stain easily. Spilled tomato sauce and cheese will bake right into the surface. I expect my pizza stones will quickly develop a patina. If you want clean looking pizza stones, the maintenance would be nearly impossible. Otherwise, maintenance is easy. Wash in hot water (no soap) and air dry. Use a belt sander or orbital sander if you ever want to renew the surface.

I'm surprised another reviewer received a broken pizza stone. The manufacturer packages these heavy and moderately fragile items very well with lots of corrugated cardboard. Both of mine arrived in perfect condition. They were shipped separately, like apparently everything from Amazon.

The crust is much better than the pizzas I was making in glass pie plates. It's crispy on the bottom and tender in the middle. The toppings are better too, because they are cooked at higher temperatures and have more of a roasted flavor. Before, pizzas cooked at 350 F for 25 minutes. The crust had good flavor but tended to steam under the vegetables and cooked very slowly. Now, I cook pizzas in ten minutes (!) and the crust and toppings are perfect. For entertaining, you could easily bake a pizza in the time it takes to assemble the toppings for the next pizza.

I just received the peel. For the uninitiated, a peel is the flat wooden pizza assembly station used to transfer the pizza to the stone in the oven. So far, I have made four pizzas without the peel and it's frustrating, and possibly dangerous working in a 500 F oven. Get the peel. It's not an option.

A tablespoon of corn meal on the peel and the stone will prevent the dough / crust from sticking.

The pizza stone is requiring a new learning curve, and I'm fairly sure it'll end up being a bit more effort than the pie plates I was using, but the much better pizza will be well worth the little extra effort. The peel and stone make it possible to have gourmet restaurant pizza at home. It's much easier than most people would think, and much less expensive than eating out. With no prior experience, expect 4-5 attempts to work out the tricks. After that, homemade pizza is fast and easy.

Pizza Dough:

1 1/8 cups of warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups bread flour

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl in the order listed. Mix by hand until liquid is absorbed. Use a heavy duty mixer (Kitchenaid, etc.) and a dough hook to knead the dough for ten minutes (highly recommended), or knead by hand on a floured bread board until the dough has a silky sheen (the labor intensive method). Spray with olive oil in the mixing bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise until doubled in size. This takes 20-30 minutes in a 200 F oven (lowest setting) or on the stove top as the oven below is preheating. Makes two 14" pizza crusts.

I was working in the garage when I heard what sounded like a gunshot blast inside the house. I ran inside and found our old well-seasoned pizza stone cracked in three huge pieces and I was sad.

LESSON: Do NOT ever (EVER!) leave your pizza stone on stove-top burner that is turned on. It was an accident, but the result was loud, scary, and sad.

Quickly, we were in the market for a new pizza stone because we used it all the time and wanted to get a new one well-seasoned sooner rather than later. We bought the Old Stone version based on reviews and such and have been nothing but happy with it since we got it.

This pizza stone weighs a ton (about twice as heavy as our previous one), but it does a great job of retaining seasoning and cooling down. Our old one took a while to cool down, but this one seems to cool down a lot faster. If you're in the market for a pizza stone, I highly recommend this one.

A note on seasoning a pizza stone
Ask 100 people how to season a pizza stone and you'll likely get 100 answers. Here's mine. First off, NEVER wash a pizza stone with soap. The soap will get soaked into your stone and, well, make your food taste soapy. If anything, wash with water only. BUT, we never wash ours. Before you get all grossed out about it, we basically keep our pizza stone in the oven all the time. We cook everything we can on it (pizza, re-heated pizza, cheese sticks, heated sandwiches, etc.) and just let the juices and whatnot fall where it may on the pizza stone. By leaving it in the oven all the time, all of the leftover juices and whatnot basically gets burned into the stone and helps the seasoning process. In the end, through this process, the goal is to have a black pizza stone and that's when it will be completely non-stick and give you the best tasting pizzas you've ever cooked. It'll take a while (we've been going on almost a year now and it's just a dark brown), but it's well worth it.

I've had this stone about a month, and I'm completely satisfied. It's nice & sturdy, about 1/2 inch thick with ridges on the bottom that hold it up another 1/2 inch. I've used it to make pizza and bread a few times now, and the results are so much better than any pan or sheet I've tried. Honestly, I think it's possible to make pizza that equals or betters most take-out if you use a stone, and we've been more than happy with the results we've gotten. It takes a bit of practice to use a peel properly, but I put the stone on the bottom rack on it's lowest setting, so I can pull the rack out, which facilitates putting a pizza on the stone. So far it cleans very easily, and it's just been a tremendous amount of fun to experiment with. I almost went with the 14x16 model, but decided that the round surface better suited my needs. Highly recommended!!

I did some studying prior to buying my new pizza stone. We're a two chef household so artistan breads and baking are important to us...but we cook so much that we're known to even do gourmet pizzas on the grill. Often. Even some frozen pizzas!

Because we have a new grill, (A "Big Green Egg" which has a smaller top than our old one), our old stone no longer fit. I have a degree in art with an area of emphasis in pottery so that combo of culinary school and pottery knowledge of clay and high fire temps makes me a very picky consumer.

I had already discussed pizza stones that were strong enough to withstand even grill heat with others and knew some NEVER cut it (Pampered Chef is thin and will break on a grill almost every time according to the cooks on the Big Green Egg website and a friend with a grilling tv show) and some SOMETIMES cut it but might break, and then some others could take the heat AND stay IN the kitchen.

This was one. So I took the early recommendations then looked at Amazon reviews as well. This had some of the highest ratings and the low ratings were from it not being packed well in shipping...rarely from cracking easily as other stones were said to in their reviews. Granted, that doesn't make it UNbreakable. It's still ceramic. And sometimes cooks believe a ceramic piece to break suddenly (in the oven, in a dishwasher) when in actuality it had a hairline crack in it which caused it to break when heated...which I am not saying was the cause of the person who had theirs crack, but could be.

I say that only because I did quite a bit of research first for a commercial quality stone that can withstand not just ordinary oven heat, but also direct flame at very high heat on the grill. And this one came up the winner each time, even in a restaurant supply store (which by the way, was more expensive than my just ordering it from Amazon which I did as you can see from my purchase stamp. Kudos Amazon.) It had to be thick, of kiln-quality fire brick material...

I wanted brick oven pizza with the smokiness of the grill.

Success!

And when I cook my artistan breads or pizzas in the ove...it does just as well.

As an aside, you aren't supposed to put your dough directly on a pizza stone. Put cornmeal down first. It won't stick and is a nice addition anyway. Once it's black and well seasoned, you can then.

Always preheat your pizza stone as you heat up the oven or grill. Dont ever put it in a hot oven or grill. It's not good for the stone and it won't work...in order to get crispy crust, it must be hot when you put your dough on it.

It won't be non-stick until it's been used many many times..."seasoned"... How will you know? It's black by then.

...never wash it. Never put it under water. Scrape it. Trust me on this one although non-chefs expect to die from it. You won't. Google it...it's how you use a pizza stone. (grin) Also, if you put water or soap on it will absorb it. You dont want to eat pizza soap. Nopers.

This is the perfect size as it allows the heat to flow up AROUND the stone easily as well.

For easy homemade pizza, you can buy a box or bag of pizza dough mix in your pizza aisle if you don't want to make your own dough, make it up, get your grill hot, throw your formed dough down knowing it will rise some as it cooks, once it's cooked well on one side, flip it, add sauce, and yummy things like mozz. cheese, a little olive oil, a little fresh basil and some fresh ricotta and sliced tomatoes...ooooeeee.

p.s. you can also put pizza dough directly on grill grates...they create different flavors but it's harder not to burn that way.

NEGATIVES: There is a risk this could arrive broken if you have a crazy UPS man. Ours was packed well but apparently some others had this issue so the company may sometimes not pack well. Good news is that I've returned items before to Amazon and they have been good about refunds and exchanges. Ours was packed perfectly so maybe this is no longer a risk, but since it happened to more than one person according to the reviews I read, this may be an issue. I know there is always a risk when you ship something made from clay...but that would bother me to wait on an item that arrived broken as well.

Re: another review saying that this is inferior to a Pampered Chef stone, I'm quite certain that the Pampered Chef stone is no different than this one; they, apparently, simply say that you can cook meat on it (don't know why you would, though).
I've had several stones, and the only difference I've noticed is some break more easily than others. Not enough reviewers with long experience with this one to judge that, but I'm sure it performs as well as any other one.
As for the dough sticking, I've baked probably 300+ pizzas on various stones. If they stick, it's because the sauce was too liquidy, and soaked through the dough. This happens sometimes when I do an olive oil, mushroom and chicken pizza, which is very liquidy. Not the stone's fault. And of course it will stick worse when it's not pre-heated! Why would you do that?! I'm guessing that the dough/sauce was more moist on this stone than the Pampered Chef one.

I made plenty of pizzas on several types of thin metal baking pans, and the results were consistenly mediocre.

Now however, with this pizza stone, I no long find myself ordering pizza for delivery.

1 cup water or beer
2 1/2 cups flour (maybe a 1/4-cup of whole-wheat flour mixed in)
1 package of dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon butter

Knead and let rise twice (I used to do it by hand, but now I have a bread maker which works perfectly for this purpose on the 'dough' setting). This makes two pizzas around 14 inches in diameter. Either roll them out with a rolling pin, or press them into shape by hand. The dough seems to be too elastic to "throw" it into shape - I think it's a skill that takes a long while to master.

I make pizza sauce with a can of tomato paste, some red wine and/or water, chopped parsley, chopped basil, dried oregano, chopped garlic and chopped onion. I've also used pasta sauce (prego or ragu) with acceptable results.

I almost always top with mozarella and thinly-sliced mushrooms.

I use parchment baking paper under the pizza. I slide it on and off the stone this way, without resorting to corn meal. This works perfectly for me every time.

Heat the oven up _HOT_ (500 degrees). It will only take 5 minutes to bake at this temperature. When the cheese is beginning to brown around the edges, it is done. The crust is golden-brown on the bottom, with just a bit of crunch. If I let the crust rise a bit after preparing the pizza, it will be softer and thicker.

Store-bought frozen pizzas are also better when cooked on this stone.

I'm giving only 4 stars because of the price. There must be a cheaper alternative to this stone, but I'm not complaining too much, because I've thoroughly enjoyed the pizzas it's produced.

I read all the reviews on the Pizzza Stone, some good some bad.
I almost changed my mine and didn't buy it, that would have been a mistake.
I received in in good shape, packed very well.
If the pizza sticks to the stone, it's your fault not the stones. Like anything else it take a little practice to get it right, so don't expect a perfect pie the first time. I could see an improvment the first time I used it, by the forth try,I had it down to almost perfect.

Very disappointed with this product. After using just two times, the stone developed a hairline crack - rendering it useless. The stone was placed on lower rack of oven and increased temperature slowly to 475 degrees. When finished, the stone would remain in the oven until it was completely cooled. I've used stones for baking pizzas, breads, etc. for over twenty years at approximately four to six times a year. My previous stones normally lasted 5 years. I mistakenly expected high quality for higher price tag. The Old Stone Oven Corporation needs to address the quality control on this product as it did not perform as advertised.

Many years ago I was a professional pizza maker. I don't know how many thousands of pizza's I have made, but more than two years worth in a college town, so let's agree I have known a lot of pizzas. And all these years later I have continued to make pizzas. There is nothing like a freshly made pizza. Hi, my name is Leslie and I am a pizza-holic.

I left my home town 35 years ago and recently returned to visit my old pizza shop. A lot had changed, but the important parts remained the same: the Baker's Pride ovens, the pizza dough and sauce recipes, and the taste! I could really close my eyes and believe I was back in 1973 eating my favorite pizza.

I returned home and kept reliving my recent pizza shop experience and it hit me: why am I not using a pizza peel? It never occurred to me have one at home, but I found a nice one (Mountain Woods Large Pizza Peel) here on Amazon.

That led me to realize I needed a "real" pizza stone. I had been using a 4 pound, 3/8" thick 15" Pampered Chef baking stone since the mid-1990's and it has done well, but it is nothing like the Old Stone 16" item.

This stone is HEAVY DUTY. It is 9 pounds, 16 1/8" in diameter, 9/16" thick (1" if you include the "feet") and easily fits in my GE JB850SPSS double oven (I use the top oven for pizza). I preheat at 525° for 30 minutes, slide the pizza onto it, bake for 20 minutes and out comes the most wonderful pizza. It's amazing how much much different the pizza is with the new stone. And, to give you an idea how well it heats up, three hours after I turn off the oven the stone is still very warm.

This stone arrived triple boxed (outer box is way over-sized to protect the contents during the UPS demolition derby).

I've made four pizza's in seven days. Somebody stop me!

I purchased this to replace a Bialetti-brand stone from Bed Bath & Beyond. The Bialetti stone was satisfactory until it broke apart while I was gently cleaning it. While the 16-inch stone is more expensive than the Bialetti, it's worth it. For one thing, the diameter is larger. The 16-inch stone has a higher density and is heavier, which lets it store more heat, contributing to a crispier crust.