Since my baking has taken off wildly lately and my Chef is very partial to a pizza (homemade and bought) I decided to invest my hard earned $10 in one :-P Yep, $10! Or you could go $15 for a BBQ shaped one.......... I even got a pizza wheel cutter as a bonus extra.
This is the one I went for, a 33cm round stone with a wire rack. The rack is used as handles to get the stone in and out of the oven and then can be flipped and used as a stand.
Bread was actually the reason I made this 'dramatic' purchase. I was watching an episode of Hugh Fernley-Wittingstall's River Cottage and he made a super easy Soda Bread and I copied down the recipe and knew that a stone would be the best cooking aid in my residential kitchen.
For the yummy recipe I used go here. http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/classic-soda-bread/
This was the outcome, so yummy I almost ate the whole loaf in 24 hours!
Anyway back to the pizza's. Today I went out and bought all of our favourite homemade pizza supplies and went to town! Pita bread, cheese, pasta sauce, salami, ham, fresh tomato, sun-dried tomato and olives! Mmmmmmmmmm!
The way the stones work are you pre-heat them in your oven (or BBQ) as you prepare your toppings. They will take on the heat and hold it so beware they get very hot, this is where the rack comes in handy. You want the oven to be quite hot, 220˚C Plus! The idea of the stone is that it takes on all the heat and cooks food faster by drawing moisture out of the it. Therefore the surrounding heat needs to be high to cook the toppings faster to keep up with the base. Because the stone works by drawing the moisture out you'll get a lovely crisp base on your food. You may get some food spillage on your stone but never fear this is a good thing!! Depending on how crisp and/or brown you like your pizza it will only take 10-15mins to cook. Also if you're cooking for a crowd you may want two stones running at once for an even faster turnover.
Yum, yum, my first pizza of the night straight from the oven!! (after 10mins cooking)
Once you've finished cooking on your stone put it back into the hot oven and turn the heat off. This allows the stone to cool slowly (as quickly may cause it to crack and break) drying out all the moisture and any food spillage. Now the best bit, once cooled, scrape off any dried food and put away. You do not want to put moisture near this baby so washing or wiping with a damp cloth is strictly forbidden! And that messy spilled food stain? This will become a seasoning, it will increase every time you use your stone and eventually will begin smoking and giving your food a wood fired oven flavour!!!!! Yep, a wood fired oven flavour in your regular old oven!
Food spillage? No problem!
Lastly another golden rule is to not cut on the stone!! These cheaper stones are made of a sort of clay and running a blade over it will cut into the surface and make cracking an almost certainty. Also serving on them is not such a brilliant idea as they are incredibly hot and you risk burning the table surface or reaching hands, plus sticking to the 'back into the oven to cool slowly' rule will ensure the life of your stone is extended. There are stones available that are enamel coated and therefore fine to cut and serve on and they come in wonderful colours but you're looking at over $50 for one of those.
So all in all a very simple design and fantastic kitchen gadget! I'm in love <3 and can't wait to whip up another bread xxoo
Roxanne
This blog post was not sponsored by any outside source. It is entirely my own opinion on a product I already own.
No comments:
Post a Comment