These qualities cause baked goods to cook and brown more evenly.īy comparison, aluminum is a conductor, meaning it’s great at passing heat through itself and into your dough and heats and cools down relatively quickly. Stone is also slow to cool down, so it can radiate heat consistently for a long time. A food-safe mineral compound, cordierite is essentially stone, and stone benefits baking by absorbing and holding on to heat, which it then transfers to your bread (or pizza) while baking. To test the impact of baking bread on a pizza stone, I made several loaves (as well as both pitas and pizza) side-by-side: one on an aluminum baking sheet set directly on the oven rack and the other directly on a preheated King Arthur Bread and Pizza Stone, made of cordierite. Meanwhile, brownies baked in a metal pan will have shorter, softer edges because metal conducts heat more efficiently.

Glass takes longer to heat up, so if you bake brownies in a glass pan the edges may overbake by the time the center cooks through. That’s because different materials transfer heat from the oven to your baked goods in different ways. The type of vessel you bake in, or on, will have an impact on your results. Does baking bread or pizza on a stone really make a difference in the finished product? We did the testing so you don’t have to.

Same for cakes baked in glass, metal, and stoneware.īut what about bread? We wondered if there was an optimal way to bake free-form loaves that don’t require bakeware, but rather a specific baking surface: a bread and pizza stone. Wondering if a pie bakes best in a metal, glass, or ceramic pie pan? We’ve got you covered. In the past, we’ve written about the effects of different types of bakeware on your baked goods.

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