"mike fuller" <mikadri@infomed.sld.cu> wrote:
>A friend of mine has offered to make for me a non-glazed plain
>fired clay platform to use in my oven as a baking stone....Any ideas
>of how thick I should tell her to make the non-glazed plain fired
>clay platform?
I'd think 1/2 inch should be adequate, and 1 inch would be luxurious,
but with the thicker size I'd be more worried about it's ability to
withstand handling without being so heavy that I'd be likely to bang
it on something and end up with it cracked or broken.
My favorite feature of my set of baking bricks (they were called
"bread from the hearth", I think, when I got them now close to 20
years ago is that the thin bricks (only 1/4 inch) came with an
aluminum tray into which they all fit snuggly), so they are easy to
handle--I haven't had to throw the cracked ones out as long as they
fit neatly together while in the tray, and even if fully preheated I
can pull them (carefully) out of the oven a moment to set some of the
more delicate breads right on them.
If I were having a custom piece made, I'd want to duplicate that ease
of use by making it match the dimensions of a standard jelly roll pan
or half-sheet pan to allow me to use such a metal pan for support.
Diane Brown in St. Louis
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/FoodPages.html