How A Pizza Stone Can Help You Get Tastier Sandwiches

As avid home cooks, we want to make the most of our kitchens. We are obsessed with food hacks and secret ingredients for classic and fancy recipes. We also like to explore how to reinvent our utensils and kitchen gadgets, from air fryers to simple things like chopsticks. And of course, we think every recipe is possible. We are capable of making a boxed broth taste like homemade chicken soup. We are not the best bartenders but we can ace slow cooker cocktails, and we probably don't have any oven-brick oven or grill to make our favorite pizza, but we sure got a pizza stone to create a delicious pizza in our kitchens.

A pizza stone is a flat cooking surface, made of clay, that varies in thickness and can be used for several generations (via Forno Bravo). Usually, this utensil will appear once or twice a year in your kitchen when those homemade pizza cravings pop up and delivery or DiGiorno just won't do. 

However, you should know this utensil can have a more frequent use in your daily recipes. According to Real Simple, the pizza stone is a versatile utensil that can be used for baking, roasting, searing, and grilling, because it is a great temperature regulator. You can make everything from roasted potatoes and veggies to your daily sandwiches. Oh yes, you can toast your bread, of any kind, on your pizza stone for 5-stars results!

First of all, you should understand how pizza stones work. This utensil has an initial high heat and has the capacity of maintaining high temperature while in the oven, unlike other cookware materials like aluminum (via Pizzacraft). After introducing the bread to the stone in the oven, the cooking is uniform. Cooks prefer using stoneware because it's safe, durable, mostly toxin-free, and easy to clean, as Keeper of the Home explains. You can put it in the dishwater, wash it, or use a wet cloth to clean it. But, Our Everyday Life warns that as a great heat holder, your food may continue to cook after removing the pan from the oven, so keep that in mind when checking times.

For bread, the use is quite easy. Real Simple suggests picking your bread of preference, rubbing it with olive oil, and toasting it until it's a perfect evenly crunchy texture. A Chicago-based chef suggested preheating the oven first with the pizza stone inside, then heating the bread, removing it, and melting the bread with cheese in the oven again. Once that is ready, you can arrange your favorite sandwich toppings, and enjoy the crispiest sandwich possible. After that, you'll probably see your pizza stone more than usual!