Questions about new toys

Hi all:

I have two stupid questions related to two very exciting Christmas presents I got:

1. A creme brulee set - so the fuel for the torch, is it just regular butane lighter fluid that I can just get at the drug store?

2. A baking stone - I am very excited to start making homemade pizza. Now, for ease of clean up, can I put the pizza on parchment paper and then on the baking stone? Will that change anything in the quality of the crust? (And actually, I should maybe pick up a pizza peel somewhere as well?)

I'm thinking I'll have the wonderful people who gave me these gifts over for pizza and creme brulee in the next few weeks. Thank you all for your wisdom and advice.

Hellodali wrote:2. A baking stone - I am very excited to start making homemade pizza. Now, for ease of clean up, can I put the pizza on parchment paper and then on the baking stone? Will that change anything in the quality of the crust? (And actually, I should maybe pick up a pizza peel somewhere as well?)

I'm thinking I'll have the wonderful people who gave me these gifts over for pizza and creme brulee in the next few weeks. Thank you all for your wisdom and advice.

Yes, you can bake pizza on parchment paper set on the stone. This may be particularly useful for cooking items with liquid ingredients. I don't think it is necessary for standard pizza (unless you make pizza where the cheese overflows).

The stone will inevitably accumulate a lot of "muck" on it. Don't worry much about cleaning it. You can just wipe crumbs and burnt bits off of it with a paper towel. We usually just leave ours alone unless there is something large stuck to it. A good way to clean it is to bake it, by itself, for an hour or so, letting whatever is on it just burn up.

As an aside, make sure the stone is thoroughly preheated. We usually preheat the stone for 45 minutes, minimum, before baking on it.

We also just leave the stone on the bottom rack of the oven all of the time. It's a great heat conductor and there's no reason to limit it to making pizza.

Good idea to invite the gift-giver over for pizza.

You can get decent, very cheap pizza peals at restaurant supply stores. We bought ours for a few dollars at Herzog:

Herzog Store Fixture Co
1034 W Madison St
Chicago, IL
(312) 666-2600

Hellodali wrote:2. A baking stone - I am very excited to start making homemade pizza. Now, for ease of clean up, can I put the pizza on parchment paper and then on the baking stone? Will that change anything in the quality of the crust? (And actually, I should maybe pick up a pizza peel somewhere as well?)

Using parchment is definitely recommended. Also, think of it as insurance against the pizza sticking to the peel. It's one of the worst things that can happen -- you start jerking that thing around trying to get it off the peel and the next thing you know it's on the oven floor or half of it is hanging off the edge. Worst case scenario is you start a fire or trigger the smoke alarms. Happened once to me, but hopefully never again :)

I always use coarse semolina flour for dusting peels, since I like the feel on the crust and the extra crispness it adds, but it does require a bit of a cleanup. I'll use parchment AND semolina if I'm using pizza dough recipes with a high ratio of water to flour (google "pain a l'ancienne".. one of the best formulas IMO but tough to handle).

A pizza peel would be nice, but not essential. The underside of a baking sheet or even better, a cookie sheet without the flared edges would work great if you already have it.

Darren72 wrote:

Hellodali wrote:2. A baking stone - I am very excited to start making homemade pizza. Now, for ease of clean up, can I put the pizza on parchment paper and then on the baking stone? Will that change anything in the quality of the crust? (And actually, I should maybe pick up a pizza peel somewhere as well?)

I'm thinking I'll have the wonderful people who gave me these gifts over for pizza and creme brulee in the next few weeks. Thank you all for your wisdom and advice.

Yes, you can bake pizza on parchment paper set on the stone. This may be particularly useful for cooking items with liquid ingredients. I don't think it is necessary for standard pizza (unless you make pizza where the cheese overflows).

The stone will inevitably accumulate a lot of "muck" on it. Don't worry much about cleaning it. You can just wipe crumbs and burnt bits off of it with a paper towel. We usually just leave ours alone unless there is something large stuck to it. A good way to clean it is to bake it, by itself, for an hour or so, letting whatever is on it just burn up.

As an aside, make sure the stone is thoroughly preheated. We usually preheat the stone for 45 minutes, minimum, before baking on it.

We also just leave the stone on the bottom rack of the oven all of the time. It's a great heat conductor and there's no reason to limit it to making pizza.

Good idea to invite the gift-giver over for pizza.

You can get decent, very cheap pizza peals at restaurant supply stores. We bought ours for a few dollars at Herzog:

Herzog Store Fixture Co
1034 W Madison St
Chicago, IL
(312) 666-2600

Just to add to Darren's sage advice, a cheap bench knife is a great device for keeping a pizza stone free of debris between uses.

=R=

Hellodali wrote:Hi all:

1. A creme brulee set - so the fuel for the torch, is it just regular butane lighter fluid that I can just get at the drug store?

I think the butane canisters can be purchased at most hardware stores.
Personally, I gave up on the dedicated creme brulee torch and simply use the same butane torch I use on my copper plumbing pipes. Sure, it ain't as cute but it's one less single-purpose tool taking up space in my kitchen. Besides, it looks kind of cool in its own way.

I have a bad history with pizza stones. I lost one (it got taken away with the oven when the new one arrived a few weeks after moving into this house 14 years ago), and another one shattered in the oven, with a pizza on it! There may have been too much moisture in the stone from a recent washing or something, I really don't know.

The current one we have is a nice unglazed ceramic, about 16" square. Quite nice for pizza and breads. No shattering thus far, and I'm keeping this oven for the forseeable future.

JoelF wrote:I have a bad history with pizza stones. I lost one (it got taken away with the oven when the new one arrived a few weeks after moving into this house 14 years ago), and another one shattered in the oven, with a pizza on it! There may have been too much moisture in the stone from a recent washing or something, I really don't know.

The current one we have is a nice unglazed ceramic, about 16" square. Quite nice for pizza and breads. No shattering thus far, and I'm keeping this oven for the forseeable future.

I don't know if this was the case with yours Joel, but pizza stones should not be placed in pre-heated ovens. For best results, they should heat up with the oven. Apparently, they crack more easily when exposed to rapid temperature changes. I imagine that moisture may play a part in this.

=R=

I have used stone hundreds of times over about 12 years. Never washed it. Just scrape off anything with an old spatula. Never used parchment other than for the ease of actually getting something big and wet into the oven. I noticed that it does absorb liquid like a sponge, so washing it and then putting it in the oven would almost assuredly make it crack. You will need a peel, but a flat cookie sheet can work in a pinch.

Parchment and a peel are great for pizza making. You can build the pizza right on the parchment that's on the pizza peel and when the baking stone has been sufficiently heated, just place the peel in the oven over the baking stone and using a long tongs (or your hand if you're brave,) to hold the parchment at the far end and ease the peel out. The handle on the peel makes this a much easier maneuver than using a baking sheet. When the pizza is done, you just grab and lift the near edge of the parchment, which won't be hot, and slide the peel underneath. You can reuse the parchment too.

The parchment is also great for the no-knead bread when lowering the wet loose dough into a 450 degree pot, and then to lift it out of the pot when it's done. No mess at all.

Not sure I would recommend this unreservedly for all stones, but I have very successfully run mine a number of times through the oven cleaning cycle and it comes out looking like new

I also keep mine in the oven, and mostly just scrape the stuff off with a spatula (cheese falls on it, etc). I occasionally take it out and wipe it off with a damp sponge, just to get the dust of overburnt things off. I think it's around 15 years old now...

Hellodali wrote:Now, for ease of clean up, can I put the pizza on parchment paper and then on the baking stone?

I've been using parchment paper with my baking stone for years and never had a problem (except for that one time when I used too big of a piece of parchment paper and the corner somehow drifted down into the reach of the gas and briefly caught fire). But I did just notice something on the box the other day when I pulled it out.

"Withstands temperatures up to 420 degrees"

I crank my oven up to 550. The parchment paper turns brown/black and brittle. Anyone know if this is a problem?

-gtgirl

Parchment cuts down on the mess, but when the stone and dough are in direct contact, the stone draws some of the moisture out of dough giving a very different texture to the bottom of the crust. As a compromise, you can build the pie on the parchment, load the pizza onto the stone, and then after a few minutes when the crust has set, slide the parchment out from under the pizza.

Bill/SFNM

gtgirl wrote:I crank my oven up to 550. The parchment paper turns brown/black and brittle. Anyone know if this is a problem?
-gtgirl

I've used parchment on the 1000F deck of my brick oven. It instantly vaporizes and disappears without a trace. I've also used it at much lower temps. The burnt part just flakes away. Never been a problem for me.

Bill/SFNM

gtgirl wrote:I crank my oven up to 550. The parchment paper turns brown/black and brittle. Anyone know if this is a problem?-gtgirl

The parchment under the dough will be well insulated, so don't worry about the paper disintegrating into your crust. When taking it out of the oven, I carefully load the edge of the pizza onto the peel so as not to crumble burnt parchment onto the top.

I have a stone that I never use because I don't have a peel and I hadn't figured out the baking sheet method. This thread inspired me to look into peels. While searching around online I found this:

www.superpeel.com

I have no idea if it works well or if it is a good deal but it looked intriguing. Anyone else know about this product?

comradelaura wrote:I have no idea if it works well or if it is a good deal but it looked intriguing. Anyone else know about this product?

I do not own one, since I already have a standard wooden peel that works just fine, but it is highly regarded as a "must have" for serious home bread bakers. It does supposedly work as advertised and is well worth the price tag. You can find reviews by actual users at The Fresh Loaf.

comradelaura wrote:I have a stone that I never use because I don't have a peel and I hadn't figured out the baking sheet method. This thread inspired me to look into peels. While searching around online I found this:

www.superpeel.com

I have no idea if it works well or if it is a good deal but it looked intriguing. Anyone else know about this product?

Cooks Illustrated likes it, which is generally a good sign.

My biggest worry with the Super Peel is that the handle seems pretty short. The longer handle on mine has two benefits: it makes it much easier to hold, since you can put two hands on the handle itself, and it means you don't have to stick half of your arms inside the hot oven.

The other worry is that you'll have to clean that cloth after each use.

We bought our peel from Herzog, which I mention above. My recollection is that it was $15, at most. As best I can tell, it is item 4818, the largest peel in this picture.

The appeal of the Super Peel seems to be the attached cloth that makes it less likely raw dough will stick to it. We just throw some flour or cornmeal on our wood board. Sticking is rarely an issue. (As mentioned above, you can also use a piece of parchment between the peel and dough, though in the long run this will be more expensive than the Super Peel.)