How to pick a Pizza Stone for the Big Green Egg.
The starting point for cooking great pizza in the Big Green Egg, Kamado Joe, or other Kamado-style grill is a good pizza stone. We have cooked thousands of pizzas in kamado grills. From our experience, here is what you should consider before choosing a stone.
Size
For Kamado grills, the size of the stone makes a difference. A stone should allow a great deal of space around the outside edge so that there is plenty of airflow around the edges. The pizza stone should also be sized so that it is “shaded” from the direct heat of the fire by the plate setter or ceramic deflector. We recommend a 12” stone for a Minimax and Medium and a 14” stone for a Large, and XL. A larger stone will fit in an XL, but heavy-duty 14” stones are widely available. Our Large and XL double racks are set up to accept 2- 14” stones. (There is an “XL pizza stone” available for the XL but it is 21” across which blocks airflow and overheats around the edge. We highly discourage this stone)
Durability
Kamado grills like the Big Green Egg can easily reach temperatures of 800F-900F when set up for pizza. Most home-oven pizza stones are not designed to withstand these temperatures. Pampered Chef stones are great electric oven pizza stones, but they were never intended for extreme-temperature cooking. Stones for a Kamado-style grill are thicker and more durable to withstand high temperatures. Because of this, a high-quality pizza stone should last for years of pizza cooking.
Material
There are a number of material options for pizza stones. A pizza stone mimics the floor of a wood-fired pizza oven by absorbing some of the moisture and releasing it back as steam to bake the dough on the bottom. Stones that are glazed or made of metal will not perform this critical function. Steel is an option that is great for an electric oven but gets too hot in a Kamado grill. See HERE for details on steel stones. You want a porous material like clay, ceramic, or cordierite. Clay and ceramic are suitable, but fragile options and are therefore usually significantly cheaper. Cordierite (or tradenames like Thermarite) was a natural material that is now made synthetically and is valued for its dimensional stability even when rapidly heated and cooled. Modern Kamado grills have cordierite in the walls to ensure that they stand up to the demands of cooking at high temperatures. Make sure to choose a pizza stone made with cordierite.
Certifications
We selected a stone among many options to sell through Pizza-Porta.com. This selection was made based on the durability of the stones we tested, but also the important details of the manufacturing process. It is very easy to acquire products on Ebay and Amazon that do not meet basic regulations. Look for FDA, ROHS, and EEC and EC certifications before choosing a stone. Excess lead and other contaminants are frequently discovered in imported ceramics. Don’t take this risk of lead or other contaminants in your food to save $20-$30 on something that will last for years. Make sure to choose a stone from a reputable source. And, make sure that the stone meets certification requirements.
Other thoughts about pizza stones
There is a notion that the bigger the oven, the bigger the pizza stone, the bigger the pizza. The counterpoint is that the dough size should drive the pizza size. An 8 oz. dough ball is a very convenient size. It is easy to handle and stretch. This size dough ball stretches out to a 12” pizza which then comes off a 14” pizza peel easily. With a Pizza-Porta you can make multiple 12” custom pizzas quickly rather than making one 16” pizza (with 1/2 pepperoni, 1/3 mushroom and 1/8 without onions.)
Don’t put anything on a stone to treat or clean it. Oil will burn and soap will get into your crust. A wooden or metal scraper or a metal brush will clean any surface spills. Pre-heating will clean off everything else. It may look a bit stained after use, but it is fine for cooking. If your stone does get wet make sure it has time to dry thoroughly before cooking.
If your grill produces a great deal of smoke while preheating, wipe the stone off with a wet 100% cotton towel (polyester will melt) and a pair of tongs before cooking your first pizza.
Pizza will not stick to a stone that has reached an adequate temperature. Always cook on a stone that has reached at least 400F. An infrared thermometer is a great tool for this purpose, but letting a kamado-style grill preheat for 30-40 minutes should be sufficient to reach these temperatures.
Coating a stone with cornmeal will just make a mess. That advice may be appropriate for some low-temperature baking items, but not pizza. Use a scant amount of semolina or cornmeal on the wooden peel to act like ball bearings to launch your pizza. The remnants that get on the stone can be brushed off from time to time.
As always, have fun making great pizzas in your own backyard!
RCL Double rack with 2 pizza stones