Rock may crush Scissors, but not Steel

Hubby said he'd get my old, beloved pizza stone cut down for me to fit in the Gagg oven, so along with the pizza steel in one, I could utilize both cavities for last week's big pizza feed.  Unfortunately, he thought he could do that just minutes before the crowd arrived, forgetting or not thinking that it would have to heat for an hour or more to be of any use.  That meant I enlisted the help of the special, Gaggenau baking stone and element again, giving them another chance to prove their worth.

Kitchen forum friend JC thought there might be something amiss with my Gagg stone, because of the white crusts I got on previous pizza baking outings.  So this time, I had Prince CuddleBunny fetch the infrared thermometer Hubby got in a goody bag at a conference.  After preheating for well over an hour at 500, the surface read about 500 degrees.  So I'd say the element is doing its job.

Speaking of temperature, that is part of what makes the competition between the Gagg stone and the baking steel a little bit of an unfair fight.  The steel bakes pizzas well at higher heats than the stone does.  I need to keep the stone at about 475 when I'm baking pizzas, but the steel can stay at 500.  

As you can see from photos I took well into the pizza feed, I wasn't getting equal results from the different surfaces.

The first "pop"...Just 2 or 3 minutes in, shortly after the pizza hits the hot, hot surface:

On the Gaggenau stone and element set

The great rise on the baking steel

And the baking steel pizza is beautifully done in about 8 or 9 minutes, 

while, at that same point, the Gaggenau pizza stone pizza needs an additional 5 to 7 minutes.  

I admit that I still use parchment on the stone, and my friend
 says that may be affecting my result.  But that would mean
forming each pizza, one at a time, directly on cornmeal on
the pizza peel, and that just wouldn't work well
for the number of pizzas I need to bake.

That means the steel put out at least 3 pizzas to the stone set's 2.  My guess would be that I baked 8 pizzas on the stone, and 13 better ones on the steel.

I'm done.  The Gaggenau baking stone set loses again.  It's not worth my time (and the muscles to heft it around) for that result, and even though I got a deal at the time I bought the oven, it still far more than the price of a baking steel or other stone options, and wasn't worth the expense.  I still hope Hubby gets to cutting down my formerly favorite stone, and then I can compare it to the steel.  I've missed using the double oven to its full capacity to make pizza!

Pizza: One Step Back

Prince CuddleBunny was sick on New Year's Day and a few days preceding.  He had a sore throat, cough, headache, and fever.  No upset tummy, but no appetite, either.  So I was happy when he was finally hungry, and wanted to make him whatever sounded good...

Pizza.

I had dough made, of course, since I always replenish my dough bucket the same night I use any.  But he was hungry "NOW," and with heating the oven and heavy stone, pizza is not really a "now" meal.

So I thought a bit, and decided to go back a ways, to before I'd ever heard of pizza stones, and use a cookie sheet at 425 degrees, like my mom did when I was a kid.    The oven was preheated by the time I spread the dough and topped it, so no extra waiting, like with the stone, which takes about an hour to heat.

Last Friday's version of the cookie-sheet pizza:
round and on parchment, so I could make our usual 5 pies.
I slid these onto the hot cookie sheet, using the pizza peel.

I had one of the blue pan-racks already in the oven cavity, so that's what I used as a rack, in the bottom position, and just put the cookie sheet on that.  I used the Bake mode, so it only heated from the bottom.  After all, that's the only option we had when I was a kid!










The pizza came out great in about under 20 minutes.  The top was nicely browned and the crust was crispy and brown, too!  A result I've been fighting and fighting to achieve on the expensive integrated Gaggenau pizza stone.  I'm happy to have found this method, but still frustrated that something made especially to do this job, and was so expensive, just doesn't come through.

This one, I put directly on the blue pan, without the
cookie sheet in between.  The crust got a little too dark.
--But still preferable to too pale and limp.

A couple of Kitchen forum friends have suggested trying a Baking Steel. Sur la Table offers one (14" x 13") that's available on Amazon, which is made in USA by Stoughton Steel, the same as the original Baking Steel (14" x 16") offered here.  The basic model is a 1/4 inch thick piece of steel, used similarly to, but instead of a stone, and from reading the reviews (here... and here), sounds amazing.  I have a decent result with the cookie sheet, but it sounds like the baking steel will allow me to go back to the high heat, quick-turnaround, great-every-time type of pizza baking I'd gotten used to in my Wolf oven.  It will just barely fit in my silly, shallow oven, and at almost $80, the price tag is slowing me down a bit.  But I think that, eventually, --and probably sooner rather than later, because I'm impatient-- I'll have to give it a try.

Did you notice the cutting board in the last couple of pics?  That's my beautiful Christmas gift from Prince CuddleBunny.  He enlisted his dad's help and made me this beautiful pizza board... 14" in diameter by 2" thick.  I love it!!

Gagg Pizza, Strike 2

A couple of weeks ago, I shared about our first use of the special Gaggenau pizza stone and element.  We weren't overly thrilled with the result... Nicely to overly brown tops, but underdone crust.  

I thought that using a 550 degree setting was too high, so planned to try a lower setting next time.  I thought would require longer baking time, and maybe give the bottoms long enough to cook through before the tops got too brown.

So this week, I tried heating the stone to 550 degrees, but when I put in the pizzas, I turned the oven down to 450.

I apologize for the less-than-stellar phone photos!
One of the kids had my camera elsewhere that evening.

At 9 minutes, the top on the first one looked nice, but I checked the underside and it was still white.  I cooked that one for 3 more minutes, and it was doughy.

The next ones I cooked for 15 minutes.  The tops got VERY brown, but the crusts never got golden brown.



























I am disappointed.  I'm not sure where to go from here.

I wish I could turn the fan off in this mode, and only bake the pizzas with the use of the element under the stone.  I could do as I've done before and use the mode that uses only the lower oven element and no fan.  But that defeats the purpose of having the special element that tucks in just under the stone, so I want to look into this further.  

I think I'll contact the distributor and see if they have further advice, and I'll update you as there is more news.

Gagg Pizza!

...Not to be confused, of course, with "Gag, pizza!"  ;-)

You may have guessed... My Gaggenau pizza stone and element arrived!

I received 4 parts... The exposed element, the rack that slides into the oven, the stone that sits on the rack, and a pizza peel, or "wooden pusher," as the included literature call it.  (Does 'pizza peel' not translate well in German?)

This is the new one compared to the one I already use.
Since it's just 1/4 or 3/8" plywood, the handle is less than comfy.
But I didn't expect it at all, so for 'free,' I guess it's OK

The instructions had words that got me started, but with translation like pizza peel = wooden pusher, I found the illustrations more helpful.  When the shapes of the parts in my hands didn't match the shapes of those in the drawing, however, I had to play until it worked.

You might barely be able to see that the wire rack is
shaped differently at the front corner than the back,
which is not the case in the diagram.  This took roughly
2 tries and 10 seconds to figure out by trial and error.  ;-)

You can see here how the stone kind of wraps
over the element

I turned to the instructions again when it was time to turn on the oven and heat the stone for use.  

Again a little unhelpful, as it said only to "preheat the oven to the temperature stated in the recipe."  And that it would require more preheating time than usual, which I'd expected.  Although, the rep told me I wouldn't have to preheat as long as I had with the Wolf, in which I heated the stone for an hour after preheating the oven.

I checked the manual and, also, the recipe book I'd been given at the showroom.  No pizza recipes or pizza baking guidelines in the baking charts.  The only clue was included in the chart of heating modes, their symbols and uses.  I think the graphic was only supposed to be an example, but as it was the only hint I had, I went with it, and set the oven to 550 degrees.

As it heated, I set the 'count-up' timer, so I would know in the future how long I needed to plan for preheating.  I'm sure I'm saving a few minutes, but it was still near an hour to reach temperature.

The count-up timer is at the top left.  This was a couple
minutes after I noticed it'd reached temperature.
The clock is next to the timer.  Did I ever tell you how
tiny it is?  1/8 of an inch.  How helpful, especially from a distance!

I had to make the pizzas much smaller than I usually do, since the stone is only 12" deep.  No more 15" pizzas!  But I could fit 2 on, side-by-side, so that helped.  

Hubby swooped in for the first try... Still hot!

Again, I set the count-up timer, so I could watch the first set and see how long to set the timer for the rest.  In an impressive 5 1/2 minutes, the pizza was beautifully browned on the top and golden brown on the bottom....









Beautiful, yes, but, not too impressive, as it was still too doughy on the inside.  I cooked the next ones a bit longer, but even though the top was getting to the maximum browning I could stand, the crust wasn't done enough inside for us.  

That's when I paid more attention and noticed that with this mode, the convection fan is on.  I have no way to adjust that or turn it off while still using the stone element.  I will have to try a lower temperature next time.