Seasoning and Rust on a Pizza Steel

The short version

A pizza steel is bare carbon steel, so it can rust, and the thin polymerized oil film that stops it rusting is what everyone means by seasoning. Both plates we recommend arrive already seasoned, so there is nothing to do before the first bake. After that the entire job is four steps and about ninety seconds: scrape it while it is still warm, wash it, dry it completely, and wipe on the thinnest film of oil you can manage. Re-season properly once or twice a year, which is an hour of oven time you spend doing something else.

If you are asking this question before buying rather than after, the honest answer is that the maintenance is not the reason to choose a stone over a steel. The reasons to choose between them are weight, cost and what they do to a base, and those are in pizza stone vs steel.

Does a pizza steel need seasoning? Yes - and here is each maker's own answer

Both makers ship a seasoned plate and both publish a re-seasoning procedure, which settles the question more firmly than any amount of forum opinion.

Note the two empty cells and what they mean. NerdChef publishes a seasoning claim and a lifetime guarantee and then goes quiet on care, which is the same gap our review of that plate flagged. Baking Steel publishes more detail than any other maker in this category, and we have used their figures where NerdChef has none - but a figure borrowed from a competitor is not the same as a figure the maker stands behind, and we are not going to pretend it is.

The contradiction inside Baking Steel's own instructions

Their two pages give two different re-seasoning temperatures. The product FAQ says to "apply a thin coat of flaxseed or vegetable oil and bake at 500 F for one hour". Their out-of-box care page says to "set oven to 375-400 degrees", place the steel on the middle rack and "bake your Baking Steel for an hour".

Both procedures work, because polymerization is a slow oxidation that happens across a wide band of temperatures - hotter means faster and more brittle, cooler means slower and more durable. The reason to flag it is not that either page is wrong. It is that if you follow one page and then read the other, you will think you did it incorrectly. You did not. If you want a rule: use the lower setting, because a flax film laid down fast at 500 F is the one most likely to flake, which is the standing criticism of flax as a seasoning oil.

The one rule where steel and stone are exact opposites

This is the single most useful thing on this page, because almost everybody owning both gets it backwards at least once.

The stone side of that table is the subject of how to clean a pizza stone, which goes much further into staining, burn-off and the baking-soda question. If you own both surfaces, read both pages once and then never think about it again.

Rust: what causes it, and the hour that undoes it

Rust on a steel is iron oxide forming where bare metal has sat in contact with moisture, and it needs three things: exposed metal, water, and time. Seasoning removes the first, drying removes the second. In practice there are exactly four ways people get there.

Washing it and leaving it to air dry. The most common one by a distance. Air drying leaves a film of water in contact with the plate for an hour, which is all it takes to put a bloom on bare patches. Baking Steel's wording is "be sure to dry both sides thoroughly" - both sides, because the underside is the one you forget and the one sitting on a rack where you will not see it until it is orange.

Storing it somewhere humid. A cupboard under a sink, a garage, a basement. The maker's answer to this is to leave the plate in the oven, which they say "protects it from rust" - and most owners do, which is why the steel is a permanent resident on a rack rather than a thing you put away.

Letting a wet dough or a tomato sauce spill sit on it overnight. Acid and salt strip seasoning faster than water alone.

Taking a scouring pad to a stain. Anything abrasive enough to remove a mark is abrasive enough to remove the film protecting the metal under it. Baking Steel points at a cleaning brick for stuck-on matter and surface rust rather than steel wool.

The fix for existing rust is the same as the re-season: scrub the orange off, wash it in hot soapy water with a stiff brush, dry it completely, wipe on a dab of oil, and give it an hour in the oven. The plate is not damaged. Carbon steel at a quarter inch has a lot of thickness to lose before surface rust is anything other than cosmetic, which is the part nobody tells you when they are warning you off a steel.

What this does not change

It is not a reason to pick a stone. Ninety seconds after a bake and an hour twice a year is a smaller commitment than remembering not to put a cold stone into a hot oven, which is the stone's equivalent discipline and has a worse failure mode.

Do not take it outdoors to avoid the issue. A grill runs far above what a kitchen oven asks of a seasoning film, and the published warranty on the Baking Steel excludes warping from direct flame. The outdoor case has its own page in the best pizza steel for a grill.

Thickness does not change the maintenance. A half-inch plate is the same surface chemistry as a quarter-inch one; it is twice the mass and twice the preheat, which is the argument in how thick should a pizza steel be.

The plate to buy, if care is what you were weighing

Best for someone who wants the maker to have published the answers: the Baking Steel Original. A published 15 lb, a quarter inch, pre-seasoned on both sides with organic flax oil, and - uniquely in this category - actual written procedures for washing, drying, oiling, re-seasoning and surface rust. Every quoted instruction on this page comes from them. That is worth something on a product you will own for thirty years.

Best cheaper plate, if you accept less documentation: the NerdChef Steel Stone Standard. Same quarter-inch thickness, a slightly larger 16 x 14.25 footprint, flax-seasoned, guaranteed for life. The care guidance is thinner, so the Baking Steel procedure above is what you will end up following.

Best for a household that bakes bread as well: the NerdChef Ultimate. A half inch, and by our arithmetic on its published dimensions about 32 lb and roughly 55 minutes to reach 95 percent of oven temperature from cold. Nothing about the seasoning changes. Everything about the handling does, and a plate that heavy is one you leave in the oven permanently whether or not rust was on your mind.