I believe the idea behind the pizza stone is to replicate the high-heat surface of the traditional Italian pizza oven by preheating the stone in the oven for about 20 minutes at the highest temperature that your oven allows and using a peel to slide the prepared pizza right onto the hot stone. The stone is porous and should never be oiled or washed; a light wiping with a damp cloth should suffice.

The following is what works for me, fine-tuned by trial and error, and includes my own recipe for a crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-and-bready-on-the-inside pizza crust that passes muster with my NYC-born-and-bred husband who likes NYC-style pizza:

PIZZA CRUST (bread machine)

3/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups bread flour (using dip-and-sweep method of measuring)
1 teaspoon instant yeast
cornmeal, for dusting peel
olive oil, for brushing on

Place first four ingredients in bread machine, in the order given. Select pizza dough cycle. Press start.

At completion of cycle, remove dough from machine. Stretch gradually into one 12” to 14” round on cornmeal-dusted peel, resting between stages to allow dough to rest.

With pizza stone in center of oven, preheat oven to highest temperature available (550 degrees in my oven).

Brush entire round of pizza dough with olive oil just before adding pizza toppings and baking. Open oven door and carefully slide prepared pizza from peel onto pizza stone. Bake until pizza crust is the desired brownness and crispness (check underside by lifting crust from peel using a spatula), about 6 to 8 minutes at 550 degrees. Remove from stone onto peel, cutting board, or serving plate.

Yes, I had a few messy ovens and misshapen pizzas as I practiced my peel technique, but practice makes perfect.

Enjoy!

Sandy