stone for oven in melbourne?

i been looking around but so far i can only find round pizza stone, i had one of those and it did "ok" but it isn't perfect and main issue i have is its shape and size....

was doing some naan breads and it is pain to work with round stone, i could only do one at the time or two small, if i had full size rectangular shape stone i could easy do 3-4 naans at once....

What kind of oven do you use croc?

kleenmaid build in oven

i believe it is most typical size for build in ovens, 56 litre capacity

anyone ?

I reckon get a shallow baking tray,as close to the whole size of your rack,as u can get. 2cm would be deep enough, or 3 if you can find (or make) the tray.

Get some pyro (fire ) cement from a refractory like Darleys (vic), theres a cement called Istra40 which works. make it up,and fill the tray w it. When it goes off, it should be a custom made perfect "sole" for you not wood-fired oven . Should be really practical(pizza) and roomy.............. and......you could also try potters clay which is easy to buy(maybe mixed w some renderers sand 1/3, wood ash(coupla handfuls) and water to the correct consistency...spreadable but not wet). Ive always thought that should work if initially fired correctly.

Croc, I happily use pizza stones, but two suggestions I've been given are :

1. get a kiln shelf/stone made to measure for your oven from a ceramics shop

2. fill the shelf with unglazed terracotta tiles, so that it fills the shelf up completely.

Don't know if either of those suggestions are any good, but thought I'd pass them on just in case.

Cheers, Celia

Tekky,As hot as your domestic oven will go..250 ?...for about 3hrs should bisqe?(is that the word?)fire it...which is not hard enough for "hard", but should work fine as a bakestone.You would have to wet it before subsequent bakes.

Will try that out....found a new craft store.

I measured the dimensions of my home oven (fan-forced electric).

I went to a tiling company and got 2 thick & unglazed ceramic garden tiles - about $5.00 each in Alice Springs - and asked the company to cut them to fit my oven shelves.

I can bake 2 or 3 loaves on them - up to 1.8 Kg of dough.

Good one...how thick are the tiles? How do they fit...one each side with a join down the middle? or.....?

 Would be interested to know the thickness too. How about clay bricks?

brick too thick!! take too long to heat,and waste power...tiles at 2-3cm should be ideal.

I'm away from home until Thursday. I'll measure them then.

I think they are 1.5 to 2 cm in thickness (the thickest I could find).

They were bigger, but have been cut to 2 equal-sized pieces that come together in the middle. There is a very slight (and hardly noticeable) step in the middle.

I've put dough directly on them (with and without baking paper) - even slack ciabatta dough, and it doesn't stick.

They make unglazed terracotta stuff. I use 6 of their edging tiles (~10cm x 15cm - easy to store when not in use). These have a wave shaped top - that fits together OK or you could cut it off easily with a tile cutter. They are about 1cm thick

Soak for 24 hrs in water before frist bake and dry out in oven, I spray lightly with canola oil before each, but its probably not necessary.

I bought a marble board with rolling pin at a two dollar shop  for about ten bucks  years ago.I pulled the the plastic stubs off the bottom. I've been using the board to bake pizza and bread on for ages and it works a treat.Im not sure that its actually marble. Re concrete: Normal concrete will take about 600 degrees celsius before it explodes. Using refractory concrete is probably unnecessary as you would probably never get it hot enough to fire it to full strength. So a refractory rep. once told me.

I used to have a friendly stone bench maker next door at work. I picked up a piece of natural granite slab that I cut down with a diamond blade on an angle grinder to fit my oven. The slab is the same stuff they make kitchen bench tops out of and is about 15 to 20mm thick. It takes a while to heat up (at least an hour) but all it cost me was a cheap diamond cutting blade as it was an offcut that was going to be thrown out.

It works a treat!

Like Pete I use a lump of granite instead of one of those pizza stones, I found the oven recovers quicker and I get a more even crust

I was given a Piece by Pete's brother that was one of Pete's off cuts