A pizza stone is a useful stone chunk that permits home gourmet experts to prepare perfectly cooked, authentic-tasting pizzas and at home. All in all, you may not have to clean your pizza stone all the time, as cooking pizza on it will season it. In any chance that you do need to clean it, make certain to do it the right way.
Cooking the perfect pizza not only implies getting the ingredients right but also depends on the cleanliness and seasoning of the pizza stone that you are using for cooking the pizza. If your pizza stone is not maintained properly, it might for sure, affect the quality and taste of the pizza.
Cleaning and maintaining your pizza stone assure two important things:
- Your stone gets perfectly seasoned.
- You make delicious pizzas every single time, provided you cook them right.
A pizza stone enables your home broiler to work as a block stove. This stone holds the heat suitably and provides the perfect crisp to the crust of the pizza.
Cleaning a Pizza or Baking Stone
When washing your heating stone, you have to oppose utilizing Chemicals. Pizza stones do not need to be exposed to cleaning chemicals to make sure they are clean. Regular washing of the stone would do. Since pizza stones are porous, which implies they have loads of little openings on a shallow level, they will hold things they come into contact with.
There are different ways in which the stones can be cleaned and below-mentioned are the most fundamental methods to clean a pizza stone.
The Hand Wash Method
- Before you clean the stone, make sure it has been cooled to room temperature. There are chances that it might crack if you use cold air or water. Use heat-safe gloves if you’re using it while it is hot. Also, make sure that the surface it is placed on is heat safe.
- With an unpolished mechanical assembly or brush, scratch-off the stuck bits of food. Use a stone brush or a plastic spatula to remove any kind of food particle that is stuck on it. If you’re scratching, do it in an outward direction, where the food is. Try avoiding a metal spatula to scratch.
- Never use chemicals on your pizza stone. Despite the way that it may seem, by all accounts, to be normal to clean your stone with chemicals, doing this can devastate the stone. Pizza stones are penetrable, and chemicals will get inside its pores and cause your food to have a delayed flavor impression.
- Use a soft cloth or any material that can absorb water to wipe the stone dry clean. As the stone has pores, the water might seep into the pores and over sometime, it might even lead to the stone cracking under normal heat.
- If everything else fails, moisten your pizza stone in water. So that the heat of the stone is immediately brought down. In plain water, smothen the pizza stone for the time being, and have a go at scratching once more. Remember that in the moistening process, your pizza stone will ingest a lot of water, so let it dry totally for a week somewhere in the vicinity. Regardless of whether it looks dry, it has a ton of water in it.
- Let your stone dry totally before using it for the next time. Store the stone at room temperature before using it again. This will allow the water to evaporate out of the stones through the pores leaving the stone completely dry the insides as well as the outsides.
- Prevent yourself from using oils of any sort on the stone. Olive oil can cause smoke when the food is cooked. You can use this method to clean your deep dish pizza pans too.
The Baking Soda Method
- Mix equal amounts of baking soda and water. Keep mixing it until it turns it to a paste. Its consistency will become like that of toothpaste. This mixture will clean all the stains off it.
- Evacuate enormous consumed lumps of food with a plastic spatula. Before you clean your stone with the mixture that you just made, make sure to remove all the food particles off the pizza stone.
- Once you have removed the bits of food from the surface of the stone, dip the brush into the baking soda mixture and apply it over the stains and dims that you can find on the surface of the stone. Make sure to use circular motions with your brush on the stains to clean it properly. Once you have applied the mixture wipe off the excess with a clean cloth.
- In this strategy, the stone is exposed to a lot of moisture and that means the stone will absorb more moisture. To make sure that the pizza stone does not crack when used due to the increased dampness, dry the stone completely before using it. You can dry it by leaving it undisturbed at room temperature for almost 2-3 days.
- You can also store the stone in the oven maintained at an idle condition, if you are a person who doesn’t use the oven much frequently.
The Self Cleaning Method
- The self-cleaning technique is a method that needs to be done with extreme caution. In this method, there is a probability that you might break the stone. So, make sure to proceed with caution when you are using this method.
- Clean your oven until it’s totally away from oil and dried food. Excess oil or food on the surface of the stone might cause smoke or fire in the self-cleansing mode. So be cautious enough to remove the excess oil and food from the stone.
- Wipe off the underlying oil and food particles from your stone as well. This will make sure that the next time that you use the stone, it would be free of grime.
- Place the stone in the oven and set it to 500 degrees. You have to steadily expand the warmth of your oven to prevent your pizza stone from splitting from an adjustment in heat. Allow the temperature of the oven to rise in controlled intervals to make sure that you heat the stone evenly. You can do this using one of the best oven thermometers. Leave the stone on the support grill inside the oven for an hour once it’s arrived at 500 degrees.
- The self-cleaning power of the oven would be sufficient to warm up the supporting grill. This very heat will help you remove all the oil and dirt from the stone leaving you with a clean one.
- This is the most cautious step of the whole process. You need to be very careful here. Keep an eye out for your pizza stone and stove. You should see oil rising on the outside of the stone. Do not open the oven while it is cleaning itself as there can be smoke sometimes. If you see fire, turn off the self-cleaning mode immediately and call the emergency services.
- Completely cool your pizza stone for the time being. This process will expel any kind of oil that has been absorbed by the stone due to usage.
Conclusion
The trick to making sure that you clean more effectively is that you need to let the stone cool down and then remove the food bits on them with the help of a spatula and once that is all removed, with a damp cloth just clean the pizza stone surface. If you aren’t able to remove the food bits on the pizza stone with this, drench your pizza stone in water to mollify the consumed food and utilize a mix of heating pop and warm water to evacuate stains. Be that as it may, never utilize a cleanser to clean them, as the stone can ingest the cleanser and make your food taste funny or even lead to poisoning. Permit the stone to dry completely before you use it once more. Never cut a pizza on the pizza stone unless you are using pizza scissors to cut the pizza.