If Elvis Invited Me Over to Make Pizza, Here's What I'd Bring
By Andris Lagsdin
I get this question all the time: "If you were going to a friend's house to make pizza for a group, what would you bring?"
Easy answer: two Originals.
Not the Pro. Not the biggest steel I make. Two Originals.
Here's why.
The Original was designed to fit everywhere
Before I launched Baking Steel back in 2012, I went to Home Depot with a tape measure and measured the interior of every home oven on the floor. Every brand, every model.
That's how I landed on 14" × 16" × ¼" as the dimensions for the Original. It's the size that fits in pretty much any home oven you'll walk into. So when I show up at someone's house, I don't have to ask what brand of oven they have. I already know it'll fit.
That detail matters more than people realize. The last thing you want, on pizza night at a friend's place, is to pull a steel out of the bag and find out it doesn't fit.
One steel cooks one pizza at a time
If I'm making pizza for 8 people, I'm making at least 6 pies. One steel gets through that, but slowly. The steel needs to recover heat between bakes. You stand there waiting. People are hungry. The night drags.
Two steels in the same oven changes everything. One pizza comes out while the next is already going in. No waiting. No cold pizza. Everyone eats together. The party stays alive. I've written about how to make 20 pizzas in an hour using this exact setup — that's the real-world test.
Why not the Pro?
The Pro is heavier, denser, holds more heat. Honestly, it would do this job better.
But for a one-night job at someone else's house? I'm not lugging 50 pounds of steel on top of everything else. Two Originals fit in our Carry All Case with a shoulder strap. That makes the lifting part a lot easier when I've also got peels, dough, and the rest of the kit.
The Pro stays home where it belongs.
The peels do double duty
The 14" peel I sell was designed specifically to match the Original. Same width, same logic. Stretch a pizza to the size of the peel and it'll land cleanly on the steel every time.
Here's something I do that might rub the purists the wrong way: I slice my pizzas right on the peel. No cutting board. No transferring to a plate.
Die-hard pizza makers might call that taboo. I call it practical. Fewer plates to wash at the end of the night, and the pizza stays warm right where it landed. Slice and serve right on these babies.
That's the kind of thing I think about. The whole system is supposed to work together.
The Original is the workhorse
13 years of making pizza, and the Original is still the steel I reach for most. It's light enough to travel with. Heavy enough to cook serious pizza. It fits in any home oven. And one of them lasts a lifetime, two of them, side by side, can run a pizza party for any size group.
If someone's making me pick one steel to take anywhere, Elvis's house, a friend's apartment, a cabin upstate, my mom's kitchen, it's the Original. Every time.
That's the magic of it.
Elvis would've approved....
Andris
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.
