fergusg's Profile

The stone will absorb heat so the oven will take longer to heat up. If also has different thermal capacitance and conductivity, so any object placed upon it will react differently - basically the bottom of an object placed upon it will be hotter or colder (depending on the circumstances) than if it was just a wire rack.

Cracking on a flat surface significantly reduces the chance of shell splintering off. A sharper edge will push the splinters into the egg, breaking them off the membrane.

I have one for my (mangle) pasta machine. For me this, and the one pictured in the article, have the ratio of filling to pasta completely wrong. I like a large (2"x2", say, or larger) parcel with just a teaspoon of filling.

The edges in the photo are slightly curled - looks like they're not stuck down at all.

@Laucus116 Heston Blumenthal (owner of "the best restaurant in the world") did this on TV. He preheated a heavy frying pan under the grill (UK - I think that's a broiler to you?), upside down 'til super hot. He then assembled the pizza on top of that and put it back under to cook.

Someone's transcribed the full recipe here, along with a video, but the latter doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

http://videosift.com/video/How-to-cook-the-Perfect-Pizza-Heston-Blumenthal

Ignore most of it (unless you're a masochist) - this was part of a series ("In search of perfection") on how to make the best recipes possible, irrespective of practicality. For example, he makes part of the dough 24hrs in advance and the tomatoes are pre-cooked for 4 hours. And the rest...