Norma bakes on Steve's 1/2" steel plate in the deck oven

Steve was kind enough to bring his ½” steel plate for me to try out in the top of my deck oven. My top deck runs cooler than the bottom deck, but has a lower head space than my bottom deck. The bottom deck was about 548 degrees F. Steve and left the steel plate on the top deck for about 4 hours before we tried to make two pizzas. The steel plate did take a long time to get to the same temperature as the deck, but surely not the 4 hrs. The temperature on the steel plate was 500 degrees F when the first pie was made. The dough used is my regular Lehmann dough made with Kyrol flour. The first pie baked in about 6 minutes, or a little longer. The bottom crust didn’t burn at all. The second pizza tried went okay too with the steel plate, but the temperature of the steel plate then had fallen to about 438 degrees F. I don’t know why it fell so fast. The bake time for the second pie was a little over 7 minutes.


The 1/2" steel plate sure is heavy. When I lifted the ½” steel plate, I can now understand why people say it is so heavy.

Norma