How to Use A Pizza Stone In Your Oven For Better Pizza Crust

6 min readMay 16, 2024

A pizza stone is a thick, porous ceramic or stone slab that mimics the hot surface of a professional pizza oven.

To use a pizza stone, place the stone on the lowest oven rack and preheat it at the oven’s highest temperature (500°F+) for 60–90 minutes. Then transfer your pizza dough onto the preheated stone using a pizza peel and bake for 7–12 minutes, turning halfway through for an evenly crisp crust.

And if you need a good quality, inexpensive pizza stone, I use this one from Amazon.

A pizza baking on a pizza stone in a home oven. — **Photo**: Pizza stones improve the taste and texture of your pizza crust.

Why Use a Pizza Stone?

The key to making the best homemade pizza is to replicate (as best as possible) the extremely hot temperatures (around 700°F-900°F) a real pizza oven in a regular home oven. This is no easy task, but a pizza stone helps.

A pizza stone mimics that all-important hot, porous stone surface that blasts the dough with intense radiant heat. This rapid heat transfer:

Immediately starts to cook the dough quickly from the bottom up for an evenly crisp crust. It’s a bit like dropping an egg on a hot frying pan.
Helps get those signature charred spots on the crust’s underside
Allows the toppings to cook separately from the crust for perfect doneness
Produces an unbeatable crispy exterior and light, airy interior crumb

Baking on a pizza stone is a huge difference from using pizza pans or baking sheets, which can lead to soggy, unevenly cooked crusts.

What is a Pizza Stone — The Basics

A pizza stone is a thick, dense slab made from ceramic or stone. Its porous surface absorbs moisture from the dough while distributing heat evenly. Most are circular, around 1/2 to 1-inch thick, and can handle temps up to 800°F.

Pro tip: Most stones are circular, but you can find rectangular ones as well. Rectangular ones let you cook bigger pizzas and are easier to use.

A pizza baking on a pizza stone on a bbq grill. — **Photo**: You can even use a pizza stone on a barbeque grill.

While rectangular baking steels or quarry tiles can also work, they lack the porous benefits of ceramic pizza stones.

In addition to the stone itself, you’ll also need:

A pizza peel (wooden or metal paddle) for transferring the dough
Flour or semolina for dusting to prevent sticking
A stiff brush or spatula for cleaning the stone after use

How to Use Your Pizza Stone For The First Time

Using a pizza stone is easy, you basically just put it in the oven and let it preheat. The challenge is in sliding your pizza onto the stone without it spilling all over the oven.

See the video further down for a visual demonstration of how to launch your pizza onto the stone.

Here are the steps:

Place Stone in Oven
Position your stone on the lowest oven rack, centered and not too close to the walls. If it’s new, give it a light brush to remove any packaging debris.
Preheat Oven & Stone
Turn oven to highest temperature (at least 500°F, hotter if possible). Let the oven and stone preheat for a full 60–90 minutes. Use an infrared thermometer to determine when the stone stops absorbing heat, or just give it the full 90 minutes.
Prepare Pizza Dough
Make sure your dough is proofed, then when the stone is preheated, stretch or roll out your dough into your desired shape on a lightly floured surface. Dust a pizza peel liberally with semolina flour to prevent sticking.
Transfer Dough to Peel
Carefully transfer the dough to the prepared peel, gently stretching it outwards. If it sticks, use more flour next time. You can also prepare the pizza directly on the peel, but you have to work quickly to prevent sticking.
Slide Pizza Onto Stone
Open the oven and use a back-and-forth jerking motion to slide the pizza dough directly from the peel onto the hot stone. Close the door quickly. See the video below for a demonstration.
Bake & Rotate Bake for 5 minutes, then use the peel to rotate the pizza 180° for even cooking. Every oven is different, but most pizzas take 7–12 minutes total baking time.
Remove Pizza
Once cooked to your liking, take the pizza off the stone and let it rest for 2–3 minutes on a cooling rack before slicing. I generally wait for nice browning on the top and bottom of the crust, but not so much that the cheese and toppings burn.
Cool & Clean Stone
With pizza removed, keep the oven door ajar and let the stone cool down before brushing or wiping off any stuck-on bits. A steel brush and spatula helps with this.

Tip: Don’t overload your pizza with too many toppings — it can cook unevenly, become soggy, and potentially stick to the stone.

Caring For Your Pizza Stone

With proper care and preheating, a quality pizza stone can last for years. Here are some tips:

Never use soap, which the porous stone can absorb
Let stone cool completely before cleaning to prevent cracks
Brush off debris with a stiff brush or lightly scrape with a dough scraper
Never put a frozen pizza on a hot stone (major thermal shock risk!)
Store in the oven to maintain even heat distribution

Be sure to clean your pizza stone periodically as well.

Pizza Stone Troubleshooting

Sticking: Thoroughly dust the peel with flour/semolina and ensure the stone is preheated before transferring dough. Never add flour or oil directly to the stone.
Undercooked Center: Let the stone preheat longer or bake at a higher temp. Consider turning pizza during baking and don’t overload the toppings.
Burned Crust: Take the pizza out sooner, or lower oven temp slightly. Depending if the bottom or the top of the crust is overdone, consider a lower or higher rack, and check for doneness sooner.
Cracking Stone: Caused by sudden temperature changes. Always heat up and cool down the stone slowly. In other words, don’t throw a cold stone into an already hot oven or splash cold water onto a hot stone, etc.

With a little practice using these tips, you’ll be cranking out perfect pizza restaurant-quality pizza at home.

An old, worn pizza stone preheating in a home oven. — **Photo**: With proper care, pizza stones can last a while, but they tend to degrade and chip over time.

Pizza Stones or Pizza Steels: Which Should You Use?

For decades now, pizza stones have helped people make crispy pizza crusts at home. But you may have heard about something new called a “pizza steel”.

Here’s what baking steels are and how they compare to pizza stones.

Pizza Stones: Cheap, Easy to Find

As we’ve gone over, pizza stones are made of ceramic or stone. They draw moisture out of the dough and start cooking it immediately on contact. This makes the outside crust crispy like a cracker. The inside stays light and chewy.

Pizza stones are easy to use and not too expensive. You can get a good one for $20 to $60 in most stores. They are great for people just starting to make pizza at home.

But pizza stones can break if you change the temperature too fast. And they take a long time to heat up — about 60 to 90 minutes. You have to be patient!

Baking Steels: Superior Conductivity

Baking steels are thick slabs of steel or aluminum. They get much hotter than pizza stones very quickly — in just 20 to 30 minutes!

Pizza steel also conduct heat much more efficiently than ceramic stones, which means you can get a crispier crust with more char, very similar to a pizza oven.

The only downside is baking steels cost more — around $60 to $100. They’re also quite a bit heavier than a pizza stone. But they last for a very long time if you take care of them. This makes them worth it for people who love making pizza.