Homemade Pizza on Pizza Stones

I know I did a post a while back about making my own pizza from scratch. I made the dough and the sauce then topped with cheese. I made it on my pizza stone but I don't have a pizza peel (those big shovel-y things that are usually wooden) so I was kind of unprepared and my pizza crust stuck onto the stone. Really bad.

I hadn't used my stone since (but I was able to bake off everything that got stuck to it and then David scraped it all off for me) but I really wanted to because I was so excited when I got the stone as an early birthday present. I did a little more research on how not to get your dough to stick and I made pizza again last night (this time I used pasta sauce as pizza sauce because I didn't have the tomato paste on hand to make my own sauce. It was a tomato, onion, garlic variety and tasted REALLY good with the pizza. I might do it again next time on purpose.) There were lots of differing opinions online and some people seem like real pizza fanatics (not people who love pizza but people who are so picky about how it is made) that I did the easiest method.

I put my stone in the oven when I preheated it (on a lower rack) then I topped my (not precooked) crust. (We made the mistake of making our pizza bigger than the stone so we did have to fold over a few edges and have some thick crust but we never mind thicker crust. I'll give you another method in a minute). I took out my (hot) stone, sprinkled it with corn meal, then put my pizza on it and put it in the oven to bake. This worked out PERFECTLY! Our pizza didn't stick at all. I didn't notice a corn meal taste and David pointed out that it looks like the bottom of Little Caesar's pizza or Domino's so obviously even the real pizza guys (if you can call those places real) need some help too! Now our stone is clean and ready for next time!

The other method you can do, especially if you make your pizza the correct size is to not top it until the crust is on the stone. This can make it easier to move the dough. You could also make smaller pizzas that might be easier to transport as well. Worse case, if all goes wrong and you can't get your pizza to the stone, do the best you can and then fold it in half like a calzone. It'll still taste like pizza and it has a better chance of not falling on the floor then (I never had this happen to me but apparently it happens to lots of people).

I will also note that some people do not recommend cutting on  your pizza stone, you should move your pizza to a baking sheet or something after baking so you  don't ruin your stone. I'm too lazy and cut on my stone anyway. It's not like our pizza cutter is that sharp anyway.