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A Baking steel is basically just a chunk of steel that you stuff in your oven, heat up then cook on. It helps retain heat, evenly distribute heat and heat the underside of whatever you’re doing.

Rather than pay $100+ for one you can easily make your own. Here’s what we did…

Contents

Starting
Start with some steel

Just a chunk of some mild steel. This was about 20”x20”x0.25”. It was purchased at the local steel yard very cheaply.

Clean it up
Cleaning the steel

The mill scale needs to be removed along with any rust. We used Muriatic Acid along with proper PPE.

BE CAREFUL! It just takes a few cycles of acid->scrub->rinse and you’re good to go.

Cut it up.
Cut to size
Sparky!
mmmMMMmmm Sparky

The steel purchased was too large to fit in the oven it was to be used in. So it was cut with a plasma cutter. Using a piece of plywood as a guide is totally fine despite what you may think otherwise. The risk of it catching fire is very, very low.

Grind it down
Grind the edges

Plasma cutting can leave somewhat of a rough edge, but all the edges need to be cleaned up anyway. An angle grinder makes quick work of this.

Clean up again
Sand the surfaces

The surfaces were now wet-sanded to #400. Wet sanding is important, and using a finish sander is also important. Larger Random Orbital Sanders can cause swirly marks that a finish sander will not.

After some use, it appears that sanding to a lower grit may be more appropriate. #220 at most. This will make it easier for the Seasoning to stick.

Season
Season the thing
Season the other side too
Season the thing's other side

Now it’s very important to Season your baking steel. Click that last link for excellent information on how to do this.

Just look at that beautiful wood-like texture. So nice.

Pizza!
Use it!

That is it. That’s all there is to it.

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