Clean a pizza stone?

dougcrann

Thanks to us not being able to agree on one pizza dough we are making 2 pizzas, today it was 4, on Pizza Day. Today was our first attempt at using a normal wooden peel to launch. We ended up with quite a bit of excess flour. What are folks using to scrape the HOT (900*) stone between pizzas? Pizza place I hung around at growing up had some sort of brush/scraper they used in the pizza oven. Quick net search resulted in nothing that would work...guessing I used the wrong search words?
Out of the 4 pizzas we launched only had 1 minor casualty...I had the peel at to much of an angle and lost a piece of pepperoni...

jeponline

I use the ash tool in between pizzas to take any excess cornmeal or burnt cheese off the stone. 

Legume

If its bad between pizzas (like cheese leakage), I'll just do a quick scrape with a metal peel.  I don't worry too much about it.  When it's cold, I sometimes hit it with a metal BBQ brush and give it a quick wipe.

westernbbq

Get to about 800F, then wire brush it and itll be good as new

dougcrann

Legume said:

If its bad between pizzas (like cheese leakage), I'll just do a quick scrape with a metal peel.  I don't worry too much about it.  When it's cold, I sometimes hit it with a metal BBQ brush and give it a quick wipe.

Metal peel, simple enough. Thank You...

jtcBoynton

If something spills, I just scrap the stone with the spatula that is hanging on my egg table.

Dinah_Moe_Humm

I use a dough cutter / knife.

Botch

My very first pizza was made on a metal peel, and the sauce, pepperoni, cheeses, and herbs launched beautifully onto the stone with a firm jerk of the peel.
The dough, however, did not; it plied to the peel perniciously.  
After letting everything cool down, I had to use a belt sander on that burnt mess.  Nowadays, with a wooden peel, I don't ever brush off the stone at all.  

dougcrann

Dinah_Moe_Humm said:

I use a dough cutter / knife.

Botch said:

My very first pizza was made on a metal peel, and the sauce, pepperoni, cheeses, and herbs launched beautifully onto the stone with a firm jerk of the peel.
The dough, however, did not; it plied to the peel perniciously.  
After letting everything cool down, I had to use a belt sander on that burnt mess.  Nowadays, with a wooden peel, I don't ever brush off the stone at all.  

Problem with a dough cutter, least for me, at the temp I do pizzas (850-900*) the flames are popping up around the edge of the pizza stone. 

Can almost envision tour toppings launching while the dough stuck to the peel. This is EXACTLY what I was afraid of. When I first tried launching a pizza from the Superpeel, minus the belt, this is what happened. What a mess...

HofstraJet

Anyone use a pizza screen to resolve the launch issues? Wonder if it hinders the cook.

Rte1985

The only thing that I have to clear off the stone is corn meal from previous pizza and I've never had any problems with the dismount on a wood peel and corn meal.  I also cook a little lower around 450-500

jtcBoynton

HofstraJet said:

Anyone use a pizza screen to resolve the launch issues? Wonder if it hinders the cook.

It will a bit.  Dough in contact with a stone gets cooked by conductive heat transfer.  The screen lifts the dough up a bit breaking the conductive heat transfer.  It will still get plenty of radiant heat to cook the dough.  It will just take a bit longer.  Depending on the temps you are cooking at, dough recipe, dough thickness, it might make a noticeable difference or you might not notice.

dougcrann

HofstraJet said:

Anyone use a pizza screen to resolve the launch issues? Wonder if it hinders the cook.

I did a few times. While the pizza did cook ours never had the bottom get crispy...