Square Steel Baking Plate (14") - Durable Baking Tray for Crispy Crust Pizza, Bread, Pastries - Durable Steel Plate for Oven or BBQ Grill - Achieve Bakery-Quality Results

I bought this baking steel after my pizza stone cracked. After half a year of use, without a doublt, I prefer the steel. It is much more durable, and the performance is excellent. I use the steel mostly to bake sourdough bread. I always get a fantastic crust on the bottom of the bread, something I never got from the pizza stone.Before first use, I seasoned the steel with a thin coat of oil. It is relatively easy to clean, just do not use soap, it will ruin the seasoning. In terms of weight, I do not feel it is heavier than a pizza stone.I highly recommend getting this baking stone for anyone who bakes bread; the quality is excellent and it is affordable.

I first learned about pizza making at home using a regular oven from Adam Rageusa YouTube video. Thought pizza making was an elaborate process but from his video, I could see how easy it was. He was recommending a steel plate over a pizza stone. The steel prices were over $100. Since it was my first time making pizza I didn't want to spend too much in case I didn't like it. I went with an inexpensive pizza stone which came with a wooden peel for like $25-30 on Amazon. It worked great. After making a lot of pizzas, I decided I wanted to see what a steel plate would do. It supposed to make a crisper crust. While I can attest that the crust is definitely crisper, I found I liked the softer crust on the pizza stone so I've gone back to using the pizza stone. But I give this steel pizza plate 5 stars for its value.Btw, I would highly suggest going with a steel peel rather than a wooden one. The wooden one has started to mold after several washings. Plus the steel peel is thinner so I can use it to slide under the pizza in the oven in order to pull it out.

I honestly don't get the handful of negative reviews about this item. This thing makes the best pizza I've ever made at home and frankly, it if was any thicker it would be too much hassle to use because of the extra weight and the extraordinarily small amount of fault tolerance that exists with the extra heat passed on by the thicker steel. You can walk away from a pizza on this steel and not have a fire in your oven when you get back to the kitchen. As it stands, this steel is the best price, most manageable weight, and offers incredible results that are identical to heavier steels if you just wait a minute. That's all it takes, just a small amount of patience and you can char your crust as much as you'd like.Also, the manufacturer recommends using the broiler or a pizza stone above the pizza for top down heat, but I have a convection oven and using the convection setting blows super hot air across the top of the pizza which doesn't generate the smoke that grease pops hitting the stone or the broiler does and you still get that amazing browning on the cheese and on toppings like bacon or pineapple.

Excellent product for pizza making, using the steel on the very bottom rack of my oven with a pizza stone on the next rack just above. Its very thinness makes this work well compared to my 12-inch cast griddle, whose raised and curved handle makes difficult setting the pizza stone just above it. I get better results, at least for myself,, having the steel and stone as adjacent as possible in the oven. With a maxed-out baking temp of 525 degrees (preheated for an hour), the pizza bakes in about 5 minutes. The crust is delightful--the bottom has a delicate crispness and the rest more chewy--as a good pizza crust should be.The only slight negative--I must have gotten water on it some point (I just keep it in the oven, sometimes storing other pans in there too, owing to limited kitchen space, and it rusted like crazy. But seasoning it with oil fixed the problem. All-in-all, very highly recommended, esp. with its price, given that other steels I've seen cost $100 or more.

Love my steel. Had a stone previously, which eventually cracked.This heats up quickly - I give it only one on-off cycle to preheat, which seems more than sufficient (can’t fathom what 40 minutes of preheat would accomplish). Really does wonders for my pizza crust - seems to puff a bit more, with a perfect crispiness to the bottom.Though this is a bit thinner than other steels, it is still heavy and substantial. I honestly wouldn’t want to screw around with something twice as thick, twice as heavy and twice as expensive.

Update: Pizzacraft customer service got in touch with me and sent me a replacement steel. The finish was indeed better. There was still a bit of warping, although not as pronounced as before. To reiterate, I don't think this significantly impacts the performance, but it suggests quality control is a bit variable. However, their customer service was first rate, and I would certainly feel confident purchasing this or other of their products again. Added a star.----------I don't have experience with the thicker steels, but this seemed to do a nice job. This is definitely an improvement over a pizza stone. The crust I got was much crispier than what I've achieved before.I'm deducting one star because the the steel was a bit warped. The one I received was not completely flat; it was bowed in the center. It was only about 0.2 inches off, but that's quite noticeable on a plate this thin. Another star off since the finishing around the edges was quite rough. It's an affordable piece of equipment, but if I'd seen it in person, I think I would have considered something else. At the end of the day, if it's at a premium to a basic piece of fabricated steel, I sort of expect it to be a little more carefully manufactured or quality controlled.