Shortly after Kim and I got married we began to get interested in proper cooking tools. It's amazing how much better meals can taste when you have the right tools to prepare them.
One of our early discoveries was the pizza stone. A pizza stone is a simple flat porous plate (ours is square, they are also available round) that you put in your oven during preheat. When you have prepared your homemade pizza (fresh, homemade dough being an important part of this) you place the pizza on this heated stone to cook. The stone draws excess water from the dough and allows the dough to cook with just the right amount of crispness on the outside of the dough with the rest of the crust being cooked to perfection as well. It makes all the difference in the world.
We have had pizza nights for almost 20 years now—quite often including guests. The guests seem to really enjoy making the pizza. Everyone gets to choose their own fresh ingredients and throw it on their own pizza. But the best part is after the pizza comes out of the oven. There is no other pizza like it. These homemade pizzas, which cost significantly less than a pizza at a restaurant, taste better than any restaurant pizza. They are fantastic.
I don't normally write blog posts about cooking items, but when they are this unique and have become such an integral part of our family tradition I think its worthy of a blogpost.
So go out to Williams Sonoma or your local specialty cookware store and get one of these stones. You'll love it.
Would . . . you . . . PLEASE, pretty, pretty please post, in painstaking detail, how to make a crust? I already have a stone from Pampered Chef.
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