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Top-tested stones to cook restaurant-style pizza in your home oven.
Whether you prefer a mushroom pizza, pepperoni pizza or even a vegan cheese pizza, every type of pie is delicious no matter how you dress it. Making a pizza at home that rivals your favorite pizza joint is achievable with the help of a good pizza stone. Pizza stones retain heat and crisp up your pizza dough quickly for a restaurant quality pizza without ordering delivery. Pizza stones are most commonly made out of cordierite stone, ceramic, cast iron or steel and are placed in your home oven at a high temperature and preheated to conduct that temperature. A good pizza stone will offer enough surface space for you to launch your homemade pizza onto it and cook a pizza that has an airy golden brown crust, gooey mozzarella, caramelized sauce and some char marks for extra flavor.
In the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Culinary Innovation Lab, we test a wide variety of kitchen gear, everything from home pizza ovens to stand mixers. In our recent pizza stone testing, we tested nine pizza stones, tasted more than 30 pies and parsed through over 100 temperature data points to find the pizza stones that performed best. The stones that came out on top baked perfectly cooked Margherita pizzas, retained consistent heat and were easy to use and handle.
Here are the best pizza stones you can buy in 2022, according to testing:
This square carbon steel pizza stone produces a golden crusted Margherita pizza with bubbly mozzarella, some char marks and a crisp bottom. In our testing, this pizza steel conducted the highest initial temperature and retained that high temperature better than any other stone that was tested. You can cook consecutive pizzas on this stone and it will still give you a crispy crust. We love that this stone comes pre-seasoned so you can start baking right out of the box and that there is enough surface area for you to easily transfer a pizza onto it. If maintained correctly, this carbon steel stone will last a long time because of its durable material. This pick is Dough-Joe's most affordable and thinnest pizza steel, but keep in mind that it weighs a whopping 16 pounds.
• Weight: 16 pounds • Dimensions: 15 x 15 x ¼" • Material: Seasoned carbon steel
If you are looking to start making pizzas at home, but on a budget, the Ooni Baking Stone is only $30 and performed well in our testing. In tests, this stone turned out a Margherita pizza that had nice browning and was light and airy, but with a softer, less crispy bottom. This stone does not cook as evenly or retain heat as well as other pizza stones we have tested, but it's the right price and it performs better than using a cookie sheet to bake pizza. We love how lightweight this stone makes it easy to transfer in and out of your oven.
• Weight: 4.9 pounds • Dimensions: 13 x 13 x ⅖" • Material: Cordierite stone
This steel is made of incredibly durable steel that performed well in testing. It produced a Margherita pizza with a light and airy texture, a crispy bottom and nice char marks. The steel retained its heat impressively while baking three frozen pizzas consecutively in testing. This steel comes pre-seasoned right out of the box, perfect for putting it to work right away. While this steel is on the pricier side, it is versatile: You can use it on top of your stovetop or on an outdoor grill for more than just pizza, like English muffins or artisan breads.
• Weight: 16 pounds • Dimensions: 16 x 14 x ¼" • Material: Seasoned steel
This pick is made out of a proprietary blend of stone that performed well in our testing. The stone conducted a high center temperature of 494ºF after an hour of preheating and cooked a Margherita pizza in 10 minutes flat that had a crispy golden crust with bubbly mozzarella pools on top. This was the largest pizza stone used in most recent testing, which made it easy to launch a pizza and has more surface area for larger pizzas, but it will not fit in every oven and weighs a whopping 20 pounds. Take note that this stone is not ready to use right out of its packaging as it requires a three hour drying procedure before baking your first pizza. The manufacturer also recommends not placing anything frozen on the stone because it could break as a result of thermal shock, so defrost any ingredients before launching onto your stone.
• Weight: 20 pounds • Dimensions: 20 x 15 x ¾" • Material: Proprietary blend of stone
This 14-inch pizza stone is lightweight and highly versatile, whether you are baking a pizza in your home oven or outside on the grill. In our oven testing, it cooked a pizza that had a crispy bottom, air bubbles in the dough and a nicely browned top. Frozen pizzas turned out great — golden with big cheese bubbles— but our tests showed that the stone's temperature dropped after baking, which means you might need to allow for more cooking time when cooking multiple rounds of food. In grill testing, the stone made a pizza that had a much crispier bottom than in an oven — if you prefer a softer crust, just reduce grill heat a bit. It has handles for easy handling in and out of the oven and features the brand's proprietary glaze, which is designed to reduce chipping and makes it dishwasher-safe for easy clean up. This Emile Henry Pizza Stone comes in two additional sizes including 10-inch and 16-inch so you can choose a stone that fits your needs.
• Weight: 5 pounds • Dimensions: 14 x ½" • Material: Glazed ceramic
In The Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliance and Culinary Innovation Lab, we tested nine pizza stones in our recent testing. We baked 10 homemade pizzas (and kneaded 10 balls of of homemade dough in the process), 21 frozen pizzas, and tasted over 31 pizzas in a span of two weeks. When we test pizza stones we test for ease of use, durability, heat retention and how well the stone produces a margherita pizza and three frozen pizzas cooked consecutively. We tested a variety of pizza stone sizes, shapes and materials to see how they compared in side-by-side testing. Using a thermal gun we measured initial temperatures and heat retention at five different points on the stone, multiple times throughout the baking process. We also inspected and tasted the pizzas to see how they stood up amongst each other.
In our recent testing we also tested stones from Lodge, All-Clad, Misen and Weber. In future testing we hope to also test out Old Stone Pizza Stone, Rocksheat and NerdChef Pizza Steel which have great reviews online.
✔️ Material: There are four main different types of pizza stone materials, carbon steel, stone, ceramic and cast iron.
✔️ Shape: Stones will either be circular, rectangular or square. Many rounded stones have handles and are designed for serving as well, but have less surface area for launching your pizza. A square or rectangular stone has more surface area that will cover the oven, great for baking more than just pizza or for a beginner just learning how to launch pizza onto a stone.
✔️ Size: The larger the stone, the heavier. Look for a pizza stone that is at least 14” if you intend on making personal 12” pizzas, giving you extra room to fit your pizza.
✔️ Thickness: Thicker pizza stones retain heat better than thinner stones, but with additional thickness comes weight and added cost.
Pizza stones really do work. A good pizza stone will help conduct and retain heat, create even browning and bake a pizza quicker. A pizza baked on a regular cookie sheet takes longer and winds up denser because the longer a pizza bakes, the more it dries out.
Always consult your pizza stone’s instructions first before baking a pizza on a pizza stone for the first time. We recommend preheating your pizza stone about six inches away from the top of your oven for 30 minutes to one hour at 500ºF. A few minutes before your stone is done preheating, build your pizza on a cornmeal-covered pizza peel. Once your stone is preheated, transfer your pizza from the peel onto the stone and bake for about 10-12 minutes or until your pie is golden brown. Wearing a pair of oven mitts and holding a pair of tongs, gently transfer the finished pizza onto the peel and out of the oven.
It is best to advise your pizza stone’s instruction manual for cleaning and maintaining your pizza stone. Most pizza stone materials do not fare well when in contact with water and most recommend brushing off crumbs and burnt on pieces with a dry brush and then storing in a dry spot. If this style of cleaning isn’t for you, Emile Henry 14“ French Ceramic Pizza Stone is a dishwasher-safe pizza stone option.
Eva Bleyer has tested everything from ranges to juicers to kitchen scales in the Good Housekeeping Institute Kitchen Appliances and Culinary Innovation Lab. She conducted the most recent side-by-side testing of pizza stones. She also earned a B.S. in Food Studies, Nutrition and Public Health from New York University, is a graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute and also took Italian culinary classes at Apicius International School of Hospitality in Florence, Italy. One of Eva’s favorite foods is a perfectly charred Neapolitan-style pizza, though a cheesy Detroit-style pizza is right up there as well!