Best Pizza Stones and Steel for Crispy Pies in Your Oven (2025)

If you’ve ever tried baking pizza at home and wound up with a pale, limp crust, the culprit probably isn’t your dough. It’s your baking surface. Most home ovens can’t crank up to brick-oven-level temps, and aluminum sheet pans, and even pizza pans, won’t do you any favors when it comes to crispy crust. You could use a cast-iron pan, but that’s going to get you more of a deep-dish pizza. If you want a true leopard-spotted Neapolitan-style pizza, you have two options: a large and pricey pizza oven, or more realistically for lots of people, a pizza stone or pizza steel. These thick cordierite or metal slabs absorb and retain heat, mimicking the intense, even cooking of a professional pizza oven so you can achieve that blistered, crunchy, crispy crust you get in a restaurant.

A lifelong pizza lover myself, I tested steels and stones, making multiple pies (a true labor of love) to see which ones actually delivered on their promises. Below, find our top picks for turning your home oven into your very own pizzeria.

Our top picks

Best pizza steel overall: The Baking Steel Original

The Baking Steel Original

What we love: I’d heard good things about this pizza steel and can confirm that it’s as impressive as other reviews say it is. Heavy and unadorned, this simple slab of metal makes delicious pizza pies that are crispy and crusty in all the right places. It gets screaming hot fast and holds on to that heat beautifully, even when I had my oven door open for longer periods, trying to shuffle pies around with a pizza peel.

I love that it’s versatile—it’s a single slab of steel that can double as a baking sheet for cookie or bread baking or a cold platter (if you freeze it first). It comes pre-seasoned, and caring for it is easy too. When it’s cooled down, wash it (you can use soap if you plan on re-seasoning it; otherwise, just rinse with water), dry it thoroughly, and oil it up to prevent rust. Its heft translates to incredible heat retention and evenly bakes pies with perfect bottom char.

What we’d leave: It’s pricey, and its weight (around 16 pounds) can make it awkward to handle. You may want to just leave it in the oven until you really need to clean it. Speaking of, it also needs to be dried completely after cleaning to prevent rust.

Runner-up pizza steel: Nerd Chef Standard Baking Steel

Nerd Chef Standard Baking Steel

What we love: The Nerd Chef Standard Baking Steel is an excellent alternative to the Baking Steel Original and performs almost as well. I love how quickly it heats up and how well it holds that heat—once it’s preheated, it stays piping hot. The smooth surface makes sliding pizzas on and off a breeze, and it gives the crust a satisfying snappy texture.

It comes pre-seasoned and ready to go right out of the box, which saves a step. Because it is a large piece of metal, it’s heavy (also around 16 pounds), and that’s just at the standard quarter-inch thickness. The Nerd Chef Baking Steel also comes in two additional thicknesses for serious home chefs: Pro (.375″) and Ultimate (.5″). Be warned: These are significantly heavier than the standard size at 23 pounds and 32 pounds, respectively.

The Nerd Chef requires the same TLC as the Baking Steel Original (wash, dry thoroughly, oil again) and is just as versatile. Overall, it’s a good investment if you want that restaurant-quality crust but prefer something just a touch more affordable than the Baking Steel.

What we’d leave: I’m a crispy pizza gal, and I found the crust baked on this steel was a tad less charred than the Baking Steel Original. Given its weight, it’s also slightly awkward to handle, although the two holes in the perimeter offer a bit of leverage (when it’s cooled down, of course).

Best pizza stone overall: Fibrament-D Baking Stone

What we love: If you want a stone instead of a steel, the heavy, rectangular pizza stone from Fibrament is about as close as you can get to a commercial pizza setup at home. It’s made from a proprietary composite material that retains heat incredibly well and, in the right hands, churns out scrumptious homemade pizzas that look like something you could find on the streets of Naples. At around 17 pounds, it felt more solid and durable than most of the stones I tested. It’s crafted to handle years and years of use, an heirloom pizza stone you’ll have for the long haul, provided you take good care of it. It’s my pick for folks who make pizzas or other baked goods at least a few times a month, or those zealous home cooks who understand the science of baking and want to invest in a tool that delivers results.

What we’d leave: You can’t submerge it in water, use soap, or expose it to moisture, and the detailed care instructions are a bit nerve-wracking if you’re new to baking stones. You’re only supposed to use a scraper to slough off melted cheese or stuck-on dough. It’s also expensive and takes a long time to fully preheat.

What we love: I wasn’t expecting much from this baking stone when I pulled it out of its box. Compared to other stones and steels I had on my roster, it felt too light, like it would lose heat the second I opened my oven door.

To my surprise, the weight of the Henckels works in its favor, allowing me to pull it in and out of the oven with one hand. That mobility also makes it versatile: I tested it in my oven and on my gas grill, and it worked well in both settings. The pizzas I baked developed a nicely crisped bottom with a good rise and didn’t stick to the stone.