The Hearth Bake Disks are designed specifically to impart a hearth baked characteristic to thin crust pizzas baked in air impingement ovens, however to accomplish this some things must be in place, the dough formula cannot contain and sugar, milk or eggs as these will result in excessive crust color development, then the bake temperature must be increased to 500 to 525F for older ovens or 475 to 490F for any of the newer generation air impingement ovens. The disks are designed to allow the pizza to be baked at these temperatures without developing excessive crust color or more importantly a hard edge crust aka “pizza bone”. The strange shaped holes in the disk allow the bottom crust to develop some localized char just as it would in a hot deck oven, which brings up another often asked question, can the Hearth Bake Disks be used in a deck oven? Sure they can be used but they won’t perform as expected since the disks were designed specifically for use in air impingement ovens. The Hex Disks were designed to flow as much air as a screen and perform in a similar manner but with vastly improved durability.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor