After two consecutive orders of the Emile Henry baking stone showed up as baking rubble, for some reason (okay, it was the photos of the packaging for the pizza stone) I decided to go ahead and order this.
It arrived in one piece! The packaging was sooooo much better this time around and the pizza stone, itself, is great.
Amazon reviews are great, from what I’ve heard, customer service is great, half off Amazon is great, and a 10-year (minimum) warranty sounds great. What the hell, I’ll bite.
I like mine from the last woot. Only used it once, and I REALLY need to learn to operate a peel correctly (although it was good, the pizza resembled a calzone more than a pizza…)
I’m sure I’ll get it. (More corn meal evidently…) But the stone itself is everything I’d hoped.
I too was a recipient of two smashed baking stones and I took a chance on getting the pizza stone the last time it came up here (lured by the promise of better packaging). The pizza stone arrived unscathed and I’m happy to have it…although I’m still mourning the loss of the lovely baking stones. Really, REALLY hope those baking stones come back up again with the promise of improved packing.
Got it on the last round. Re-used the packaging for the old “stone” - just in case. Actually crisped the pizza bottom better. Burnt cheese crispies fell right off. The ability to use soap and water to clean it rather than the self-clean function of the oven is a God-sent time/energy saver.
From my experience, NEVER EVER use soap on your stone bakeware like this. It removes the “seasoning” from the stone which is what makes the stone nonstick after a certain number of uses.
I always cook store bought chocolate chip cookies on mine a few times to properly season my new stoneware.
Edit: I might be wrong on this one as it looks to be a no seasoning stoneware. Seems counterintuitive to me. My Pampered Chef stoneware (I actually have every piece) has only gotten better the more I use it. My pizza stones are almost black and I am pretty sure I could fry eggs on it and the egg would slide right off faster than Teflon.
I purchased two of these last time they were offered. The black one is still in the box as a gift. I have used the olive one twice. It cooks pizzas beautifully. The problem is that I can’t get all the residue off the stone, despite soaking and scrubbing, which means it isn’t as pretty as when it arrived. The stone is too big for my dishwasher, so I wasn’t able to try that. I will just resign myself to beautiful pizzas on an increasingly battle-scarred stone.
I too bought the rectangular stone and it was in pieces when it arrived. No precautions to protect a fragile object, just tossed in a shipping box. Buyer beware!