My kitchen is in no state to be baking (still dropcloths, boxes, etc.), and I don't have the energy or time either, but since Gizmonike really wanted me to try out the Gaggenau pizza stone, and since I was looking for something to make a dinner at Trader Joe's where I don't buy meat, I bought their fresh pizza dough. People keep saying how good it is. I also bought their fresh sauce. Summer pizza sounded good! I've never used commercial dough, but when I picked it up I was thinking more about Gizmonike than what I was making.

It's a little hard to separate some of the issues from the stone vs. dough, but I've thought it all through and think I'm close.

First, about the pieces: The stone is much thicker and heavier than the kind you usually put on an oven rack. It took a little figuring as I was putting it in, when my attention was elsewhere. The bits don't match the picture. Perhaps the pictures are from the previous model. My element has little feet in the front and a stabilizing crossbar in the back. You can sort of see them in the pictures. I wasn't sure if the feet where supposed to be spacers to the stone, but they seemed just right as feet. The rack that holds the stone doesn't fit between the rails like an ordinary rack. It fits over the upper rail of the pair. Good enough. My oven has a special setting for the stone, and I assume the previous model does too.

I preheated before I started on making the pizza, but I forgot to check it. It was heating for at least 25 minutes and I probably would have noticed the heating symbol. I don't make pizza this way. The dough was much yeastier than I would use, and I would bake mine before topping. I followed the instructions, but they would probably have been better with different toppings. Summer Pizza has a lot of fresh toppings which have water content. Except for the mozzarella, they usually kind of dry up and crisp around the edges and get warm, rather than really cooking. There was a lot of steaming and bubbling over on this pizza, and the center was mushy. Again, I think that was the kind of dough and toppings, and too many different recipes mixed up (i.e., I should have baked the shell like I do with a less yeasty dough).

The peel that came with is a bit of a joke. The pizza was too soft and in the end, to get it off the peel (my old one) and onto the stone, I had to kind of fold it in half like a pie crust. It actually worked okay. Not much fell off, though it wasn't as prettily placed as before. But in all that, I think the oven lost a good bit of heat. Not sure how much heat the stone lost.

As you can see in the picture, the pizza, meant to be 12" according to the package, barely fit on the stone, which is 12" wide, exactly, and it dripped down the front. Even with all the drips and sticks, the pizza came off the stone fine.

Everything but the overwetted middle of the crust was cooked perfectly. Even with the wet, the bottom of the crust all the way across, including the center, had a great, crisp, tooth without being crumbly, even after it had been sitting awhile. Much better outside crust than one usually gets in pizza specialty stores, which makes me really wonder. Either it's the Trader Joe's dough, or more likely in my opinion, the stone really does a great job. It's more like one gets from wood fired. I don't know if that's the clay, or what.

I'll let you know how clean up goes. One has to leave the stone in the oven to cool down. One is also not supposed to use water lest it crack, but I think after this particular bubble over, I'm going to give it a scrub and let it get good and dry in the air before I put it away. I'm not going to want to use it during the coming week, so that should get it plenty dry. For cleaning, one is supposed to brush it well, and invert it during the next use (it's two sided), so that the gunk can burn off. I'm going to have to run the self cleaning on the oven mess too, because of the drips.

I really bought the stone for breads, rather than pizza. It'll be great, if this first try is any indication. My full sized pizza pan barely fits in the Gaggenau oven, let alone on the stone. I use it for big loaves for entertaining. It fits fine in the Advantium, but I don't know if I'm going to try baking bread in there!

Conclusion: The stone is of limited size, the peel is sad, but the stone/element seem to work well and I do think they're worth the money and bother.