I Brought My Baking Steel to a Wine Bar Last Night
By Andris Lagsdin
Can you make real pizza in a regular wall oven, no pizza oven required? Last night I did: five Margherita pizzas, about four minutes each, in a standard Monogram wall oven at Pauly's Wine Experience in Grand Rapids. No special equipment. Just two Baking Steels and a 48-hour dough.
Here's how the night went.
The Monogram was delivered Monday. Last night was its first run, and I was excited. I left my studio loaded up: five 48-hour dough balls, crushed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and two Original Baking Steels. That last part is the most important piece of the whole operation.
Two steels is my favorite way to turn a regular oven into a pizza oven. One on the top rack, about 7 inches from the broiler. One on the bottom. Think deck oven, at home. The top steel soaks up heat and throws it back down on the pie like a dome. The bottom steel is the floor the pizza cooks on.
It's not the oven. It's never the oven. It's the surface the pizza cooks on.
Then it's the ingredients. Good ones. Always.
I preheated at 450°F on convection for a full hour. Then I ran the same test five times: same size dough ball, same amount of cheese, same tomatoes. Keep every variable the same and the oven tells you exactly who it is. (I have the same Monogram at my studio and at home, so I had a feeling how this would go.)
It performed like a champ. Broiler technique, about four minutes a pizza, leopard spots and all.
Four minutes. Regular wall oven. Leopard spots and all.
The best part wasn't the oven, though. Pauly's place feels more like a winery than a shop. Dark wood, cement floors, the smell of wine in the air. I walked the room handing out slices to customers. Everyone was kind. The conversations were incredible. And the wine: Pauly has hand-selected every bottle in the place. You cannot get a bad glass.
Pauly hand-selects every bottle in the place. You cannot get a bad glass
Five pizzas, one happy room, one oven fully broken in.
This was a test run before something bigger. Pauly and I are teaming up for pizza and wine classes at Pauly's Wine Experience in Grand Rapids. If you're in Michigan, come join us. More to come.
Andris
Want the dough that made these pies? Start with our 72 Hour Pizza Dough Mix.
About the Author
Andris Lagsdin invented the Baking Steel in 2012 using steel from his family's Stoughton Steel Company in Hanover, MA, a shop his family has run since the 1970s. What started as a Kickstarter project (backed after an endorsement from Kenji López-Alt on Serious Eats) has grown into the go-to tool for hundreds of thousands of home pizza makers. Every Baking Steel is still made there today.
Before launching Baking Steel, Andris trained under renowned chef Todd English and spent 15 years in the family steel business. He's the co-author of Baking with Steel with Jesse Olson Moore.
Today he teaches thousands of students how to make pizzeria-quality pizza at home through his free online classes and recipes.
In 2026, Andris launched the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix, the same recipe he's been teaching for over a decade, now in a bag. Just add water.
