Your standard run of the mill pizza pan is good for basic heat transferrence, but its value is equally justified by simply catching pizza drippings.  There is a fine line between pizza fired and pizza on fire. 

True pizzerias cook in wood or coal fired ovens.  These ovens are built primarly from clay or tile of some form.  The goal is to build up significant heat with very equal distribution. You want your pizza pie to sit on something evenly heated, preferably of a porous nature to suck the moisture out of the dough to give your crust that special fired taste without overdone crispyness.

It isn’t practical to build a wood or coal fired pizza oven for home use so in order to get your pizza fired properly, you should invest in a pizza stone.  Effectively what you’re doing is taking the concept of a full scale pizza oven and applying the porous, tiled surroundings to the only part of the pizza that actually comes in contact with another surface in the oven, the bottom. 

Cooking your pizza on a thick, substantial stone means super even heat distribution, water will be wicked away from the crust and you’ll get that crispyness that you expect from a primo pie.

I’ve mentioned this in other posts too, but be SURE you preheat your stone from room temperature in the oven.  Put your cold stone in your cold oven and heat it all up together.  Putting a cold stone in a hot oven, especially a thinner stone will almost certainly crack it, ruining your stone and potentially being a hazard to you or your oven.

Here are the top 3 selling pizza stones on our site:
#1: Old Stone Oven 14-Inch by 16-Inch Baking Stone - $38
#2: All-Clad Pizza Baker/Stone - $80
#3: Old Stone Oven Pizza Stone Round - $38

Check out the list of 16 pizza dough recipes on tipnut.com.  Here is the link: http://tipnut.com/pizza-dough/, they cover thin crust, deep dish, no-rise, wheat, bread machine recipes and even one that has to be made a whole day in advance.

Check out their posts:

Keri @ Dinner Diary’s post on reaching pizza perfection.  Toppings sound excellent and she is indeed rocking the pizza stone.  The pizza she featured in this post was topped with chilli, anchovies, capers, lemon juice and lemon zest…YUM http://dinnerdiary.org/2009/08/07/the-quest-for-perfect-pizza/

Irene @ ConfessionsOfATart details making a pizza from scratch, dough and all, in her post on Whole Wheat Pizza with Asparagus and Purple Potatoes.  The pizza looks delicious, not entirely sure about asparagus and potato, but I’d give it a shot!

Well, *drumroll please*, the
http://annies-eats.com/2009/07/24/greek-pizza/

There are a wide variety of pizza stones available in the major retailers and kitchen stores, from high tech pizza stones with thermometers built in to light-weight pizza stones made from aluminum for easy handling and storage. Like many things in life though, simplicity is best when it comes to buying a good pizza stone.

Main Things to Look For:

1. Porous – You want the pizza stone to soak up moisture. Drawing moisture out of the dough is what gives your pizza that much-desired crispy crust.
2. Heft – You need a solid, heavy duty stone. In addition to wicking moisture, your stone needs to provide excellent heat distribution and have excellent heat retention properties to ensure your pizza cooks evenly throughout the baking process.
3. Price – Resist the urge to go overboard here. Pizza stones originated from brick and stone ovens, many people have even used unglazed floor tile to use as your pizza stone as a cost-saving measure.  If you find a good heavyweight, porous cooking surface, thats really all you need. Avoid the gizmos and gadgets, pizza stones are meant to be simple!

In our haste, we weren’t sorting the results in any particular fashion.  You’d find expensive pizza stones mixed in with cheap ones, non-sale items (*boo*) mixed in with sale items (*yay!*) and, generally, it just didn’t make much sense.

We’ll, I’m happy to announced we’ve spiffed up your #1 spot for pizza stones and still kept it really simple.  When you visit us, you’re really just looking to research or buy a pizza stone so we’ve kept the home page all about the deals.  We list all of our best sales there, its unlikely you’ll need to visit any other page unless you’re looking for recipes, tips on usage or other general info about pizza.   But, we’ve made the home page a bit more logical, it sorts items by the discount amount.  The pizza stones with the greatest mark downs show up first.  You’re here for a deal after all so, we’ll give you one.

Tips for protecting your pizza stone:

1. Stone Storage – Make sure you store your stone on a flat surface. Most pizza tones are made of durable materials but, much like normal tile, they can easily break if stored on an uneven surface.
2. Pizza Stone Cleaning – Pizza Stones are typically porous to assist in drawing moisture out of the pizza dough. Because of this, they tend to absorb any type of moisture you put on them. This is becomes a significant problem if you wash your stone with soap as the cleaning agents will be absorbed by the stone. Typically a quick wipe of a paper towel will be enough to clean your pizza stone, though a clean brush or sponge and warm water can be used on particularly stubborn stains. If you find that its difficult to clean your stone after use, try sprinkling the stone with corn meal before placing the dough on it.
3. Pizza Stones Recipes – Because of the pizza stone’s porous nature, you must be careful what you cook on your stone. You should limit usage of the stone to cooking dough for pizza and bread. Do not use your stone to make cookies or cook any type of dough with a lot of oil in it, the stone will soak up the fat and will introduce that flavor into future doughs cooked on the stone.