Two Things Cost $400

A hockey stick costs four hundred dollars now. I know because I live it with my son Gus. That stick can last a month. Then the company changes the graphics, gives it a new name, and every kid on the team suddenly needs it. The technology is basically the same as last year. New stickers, new hype, same stick. And it works. The kids jump every single time.

A Scotty Cameron putter also costs four hundred dollars. But it is genuinely engineered, it is a classic, and you keep it for years. You might hand it down. Same price, completely opposite idea. One is built to be replaced. One is built to be kept.

This is everywhere you look once you start seeing it. And it drives me crazy, mostly because of all the stuff people throw away for no reason other than being told the old one is old.

We Build the Putter, Not the Stick

The Baking Steel Original I cut in my family's steel shop in 2012 is exactly the same as the one we sell today. Ten years from now it will still be the same. We did not hold a better version back. We gave you our best one first, because we got it right, and when you get something right there is nothing to revamp.

Look at what it is not. No holes. No lip. No handle. No clip-on gadget, no accessory you have to buy next year. It is a solid slab of steel, and every one of those non-features is on purpose. There is nothing to break, nothing to lose, nothing to make obsolete.

It Just Sits There and Works

Put it in your oven and leave it. Set it on your grill. Drop it in a campfire. It does not care. Make your best pizza, then make pancakes on it, then a steak, then your favorite loaf of bread. It is heavy. It is a beast. That is the point. That mass is what stores the heat and gives you the crust and the sear you cannot get any other way.

You do not upgrade a cast iron pan. You do not upgrade a good knife. You do not upgrade a Baking Steel. You just use it, for years, and it gets better as it seasons.

The Recipes Improve. The Steel Stays the Same.

Here is the part I am proud of. We are always getting better at the things that should get better. Our recipes, our techniques, the ideas we share with you. Those evolve constantly, and they should.

But the steel does not. It has no reason to. We put the improvement where it belongs, into helping you make better food, and we left the tool alone because the tool was already right. You are never waiting for the latest Baking Steel, because you are already holding it.

The only reason to buy another one is because you want two going at once, or because you want to give one to someone you love. Never because we forced your hand with a shiny new model.

In a world where almost everything is designed to be thrown away, we made the one thing you never have to. You are going to love it today. You are going to love it in ten years. That is what a classic is.

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 at the family shop.

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.