Quote:
Originally Posted by Weitz
What’s the benefit of using a cast iron for pizza?
We make pizza often and just use a stone.
|
If you preheat the cast iron before putting the pizza inside, I think you can basically say it imitates some of the reason why you use a pizza stone. Plus it's a pan and can keep everything from spilling out making things a little bit easier to clean.
But it is also a different type of cooking method that can create scenarios that you wouldn't get with other types of pizza cooking methods as well, so you have to factor that in. The pan can help keep things moist, but moist for some might mean soggy for others.
I think if using a cold pan to put the pizza in, you'd also want to bake vs roast the pizza. But a cold pan for pizza makes no sense to me in the same way using a pizza stone cold makes no sense to me. Heat from top could mean topping are good but underneath is uncooked as the pan/stone is still absorbing energy vs distributing it to the pizza (as intended) from below. I think you can also get a cast iron pan hotter than a pizza stone, but there's pros/cons with that.
I think a lot of these alternative methods all come down to having a non-ideal way to do pizza. There's no true best/worth method overall, just best/better methods for your situation overall. Cast iron, pizza oven, BBQ, pizza stone, straight on baking racks, air fryer etc.