On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 17:05:20 -0700, Eric Jorgensen
> wrote:

>On 6 Jan 2005 15:07:13 -0800
>"Peter" > wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I'm shopping around for a good baking stone for making bread. I'v found
>> several types, made from ceramics, marble, limestone, granite; someone
>> even suggested cast iron
>>
>> What's your experience from these types?
>
>
> www.bakingstone.com sells what is supposed to be the elite stone. I
>don't have one yet. More of a concrete than any of the above.

Hello again,

"Supposed" by whom...? <g>

At only 3/4" thick they can't possibly have sufficient mass
to really do the job.

For years, I used a piece of soapstone that fit the bottom
of my oven. The stone was 2" thick, and weighed about 80
pounds. It took more than an hour to bring it up to baking
temperature.

The whole idea of a baking stone is to increase the heated
mass. Then, when the (relatively) cool dough is put in the
oven, the mass of heated material radiates its heat to the
dough. That makes for better pizza, bread crusts, etc.

Home ovens are (typically) little more than heated sheet
metal boxes. When the dough goes in, the ovens cool
significantly.

That's the reason that commercial bakers' ovens are so
massive. When we designed our newly built home about five
years ago, I decided to put in a Bongard M2FE. (It's a
French deck oven.) It weighs about 1200 pounds...

To get a result with the FibraMent similar to my soapstone,
one would have to use 'em two at a time, stacked.

Of course, the manufacturers know more about this than I,
but they are constrained by the desire to market these
things. They know that if they made them heavy enough to do
the job well, customers would be complaining "that it took
over an hour to get my oven hot enough to bake."

Also, the FibraMent stones are rather costly. My slab of
soapstone cost me only a few bucks...

All the best,
--
Kenneth

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