Blodgett 1000 cracked stone

hi all, have a dual stack kitteredge with a Blodgett 1000 on the bottom. The Blodgett has a big crack on one of the stones, while the top oven has a small find crack on one stone. I do not now If these are oem stones or replacements, and with recent searches on here mentioning asbestos in Blodgetts I’m a little worried.

We use pans, and we do y use s grill scraper at all, let any messiness be cooked through if it falls on the stone.
Also, our pizza shovel is wood and not metal.

Any insight?

Normally a cracked stone isn’t a problem. You might have it tested to determine if it contains asbestos or not. If it doesn’t, you can easily have it ground down to provide a flat surface if there is a slight difference in height along the crack, if not, there is nothing to worry about. When you say “pizza shovel” I assume you are referring to a pizza peel used for peeling pizzas in and out of the oven. A wood peel is never recommended as an oven peel for removing pizzas from the oven as the leading edge/lip of the peel is too thick to easily slip under the pizza for easy removal off of the deck, also, constant contact and sliding across the deck surface abrades the peel leading to wood splinters getting into the pizzas…not a good thing. I highly recommend that you use your wood peels for prep peels only and get a couple of metal blade peels for use as oven peels. If you need to spin the pizzas during baking you might also be interested in getting a “spinning/turning” peel. These peels have a small diameter round metal head that is easily maneuvered in the oven and is used specifically for rotating the pizzas during baking.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Hi Tom thank you for the reply, we use pans, as our pizza is greekstyle, we never use the actual shovel to taken the pizza out of the oven. The shovel is sliding underneath the pan fairly easily. There is no unevenness, I was just scared that the crack on Blodgett stone could be harmful to us dealing with the oven due to the stones being made with asbestos. Your reply helped the worrisome in me a ton.

Even when using pans in your deck oven you will find metal blade peels much easier to deal with. As far as the asbestos issue, it’s only an issue if you were to cut, grind, drill or put it into a form which can be breathed, otherwise it’s not an issue.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor