Fibra-ment Pizza stones

[T Rex]

Hi all, I am contemplating purchasing a Fibrament - D 15.5" X .75" pizza stone and I have a couple of questions:

1. Does anybody have any experience with these pizza stones?

2. Will the size be OK at 15.5" diameter?

Thanks all in advance.

T Rex

[Firemonkey]

I dont have a fibra-ment, but the size is fine at 15.5. I have a couple of regular store bought stones and the KK provided pizza stone and both are 15" with plenty of spare room around them.

[DennisLinkletter]

Re: Fibra-ment Pizza stones

The Fibra-ment Pizza stone's density is very close to the the Komodo Baking stone according to their FAQ.

But of course the KK is thicker at 1" thick, comes with a protective stainless tray and is cast soo smooth it appears polished.

IMHO Fibra-ment are the second best Baking stones around..

[Syzygies]

I have both the Fibra-ment stone in question, and the stone from Dennis. They're both great stones; in casual use I can't really tell that much of a difference. In practice I fell back to using the Fibra-ment stone, as it controls variables adjusting to the KK; I know it well.

Density is not the same as thermal transfer rate. One can have a dense stone that's sluggish at retaining and releasing heat, or a dense stone that conducts heat too quickly. One example of such a material is soapstone, which one could naively crave as a pizza stone material, but in fact is never used to line pizza and bread ovens, despite its prevalent use to make massive wood-burning stoves for rural New England heating (e.g. a Vermont ski cabin). Soapstone has way too high a thermal transfer rate.

The Fibra-ment people claim to understand and optimize thermal transfer rates. Pretty much everyone else pours a stone in the right shape, tries it, and sells it if they like it. Moreover, the Fibrament people refused to sell me a thicker stone, claiming it would be impractical for home use. It's one thing to open the pizza shop in the morning, with the oven running all day, and another thing to burn fuel from a cold start in order to make a couple of pizzas. Fibrament sells thicker material to line commercial pizza ovens, but strongly discourages home use of these thicknesses.

That said, I have some cognitive dissonance applying all this theory to practice in a KK, or my earlier K7. I've been placing my stone on the upper rack, direct fire, no liner, with a long preheat till the fire is stable at 600 F or so. Cooking pizza directly on the stone, my crust burns before my topping cooks, and this is with a cracker-like crust and rather spare toppings. I'm striving for the best thin pizza I've had in Italy (Genova, or islands off Sicily) not the best glop pizza I've had in Chicago. My adaptation is to use parchment paper for the first three minutes, then a pizza screen (any restaurant supply house carries many sizes) for the remaining time. This way the crust breathes, and doesn't burn.

One could instead use an indirect fire, e.g. with a heat deflector stone on the main grill, pizza stone on the upper grill. We settled on the parchment/screen approach because it works for us. I like the idea of a stone that's so hot, I need a screen between it and the pizza. The effect is as I imagine.

Direct heat may heat the pizza stone primarily from below, with the stone itself functioning as a heat deflector for the upper dome. This is a very different environment from placing a stone in an oven. With a thicker stone such as Dennis makes, the problem may be mitigated precisely because the Fibrament people may be right: The thicker stone fails to heat through. But I'm guessing here.

So if you buy a Fibra-ment, you'll be happy. If you have the stone Dennis makes, you'll be happy. Either way this requires experimentation to dial in the pizza you crave.

My read is that the Fibra-ment people strive for the same perfection in their stones that Dennis achieves in his cookers, but they haven't tuned their stone to the environment in a ceramic cooker. On the other hand, Dennis pours his stone as a service to his customers, and his focus isn't on the pizza stone to the degree that the Fibrament people are obsessing over this.

So in the end, it's up to you to make any stone work.

[T Rex]

Hey Syzygies, thank you for taking the time to post your most informative response.

I had concerns with the cheaper thinner stones as well as how long it would take to properly heat a thicker one hence, the .75" stone Fibra-ment makes coupled with their years in business, got my attention.

The stone that came with my KK is 13" and does not have the "glossy" finish others have referred to. Mrs. T Rex has had a stone for baking bread in our gas oven for many years which has served us very well however, it is square and I feared as a consequence would not provide even heat distribution in a circular environment like a KK......

Soooooooooo, Fibra-ment it is! As we cannot purchase one locally, we will do so on-line and when the "snail mail" arrives............ we will give it a go and post pictures of the results.

Thanks once again to all that have provided their insight to this matter.

T Rex

[DennisLinkletter]

Density is not the same as thermal transfer rate.

My read is that the Fibrament people strive for the same perfection in their stones that Dennis achieves in his cookers, but they haven't tuned their stone to the environment in a ceramic cooker. On the other hand, Dennis pours his stone as a service to his customers, and his focus isn't on the pizza stone to the degree that the Fibrament people are obsessing over this.

So in the end, it's up to you to make any stone work.

As always, I stand corrected.. Thanks Dave

According to their FAQ:

FibraMent's heat transfer rate is 4.63 Btu.in/hr.sqft.°F tested to ASTM Standard C177-95.

Huge Coincidence..

After our own independent in house KK testing the engineers at HW and myself settled on 4.68 Btu.in/hr.sqft.°F tested to ASTM Standard C177-95.

We found this to be more to our liking.

Getting enough heat to bring this bad boy up to operating temp in a KK is not a problem so the 1" was what I wanted.

I actually did obsess about it.. Had to be KK quality or I was not going to make it.

[Firemonkey]

I can attest to the lengthy dev time on the kk stone... I had been hearing about it for almost a year before I got one!

Hey, T Rex, it sounds like you have the heat deflector, rather than the pizza stone. The stone is larger and has a very smooth surface. The square stone will also work just fine in your kk. I have used broken pieces from a thin cheapo stone to do some dinner rolls and such along with roasted chicken- a whole stone wouldn't fit.

[Syzygies]

Fibra-Ment's heat transfer rate is 4.63 Btu.in/hr.sqft.°F tested to ASTM Standard C177-95.

After our own independent in house KK testing the engineers at HW and myself settled on 4.68 Btu.in/hr.sqft.°F tested to ASTM Standard C177-95.

We found this to be more to our liking.

Whoops. Egg on my face. What doesn't Dennis obsess about?

At least I feel better that with all this theory I was having a hard time telling the stones apart in actual use! I'll start using the Dennis stone, I also agree that heating it up in a KK isn't a problem.

[Syzygies]

I was curious if any of these measurement techniques could be adapted to home use:

http://www.astm.org/Standards/C177.htm

http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=15422

Who are these people, who charge for standards based on science developed in the public domain? You'd think that there would be an "open source" standards organization that pushed these commercial entities off stage.

[DennisLinkletter]

Density is not the same as thermal transfer rate.

My read is that the Fibra-ment people strive for the same perfection in their stones that Dennis achieves in his cookers, but they haven't tuned their stone to the environment in a ceramic cooker. On the other hand, Dennis pours his stone as a service to his customers, and his focus isn't on the pizza stone to the degree that the Fibrament people are obsessing over this.

So in the end, it's up to you to make any stone work.

As always, I stand corrected.. Thanks Dave

According to their FAQ:

Fibra-Ment's heat transfer rate is 4.63 Btu.in/hr.sqft.°F tested to ASTM Standard C177-95.

Huge Coincidence..

After our own independent in house KK testing the engineers at HW and myself settled on 4.68 Btu.in/hr.sqft.°F tested to ASTM Standard C177-95.

We found this to be more to our liking.

Getting enough heat to bring this bad boy up to operating temp in a KK is not a problem so the 1" was what I wanted.

I actually did obsess about it.. Had to be KK quality or I was not going to make it.