Emile Henry Flame Pizza Stone

This is pretty and a pleasure to use. The glaze gives me the impression that it's clean and hygenic, and the breads come out delicious with a crunchy crust and soft inside. While it's labeled a pizza stone I've been using it to make Middle Eastern style flatbreads. Flatbreads are surprisingly simple: Mix it in the food processor, let it rise 45 minutes and put it on the stone. I've used this product both in the oven (my breads baked 400 degrees for 20 minutes) and on my charcoal grill. The size is perfect to fit my 18 inch round Weber grill, and my guests really enjoy watching bread being made on the grill! If anyone wants some recipes, check out The Food of Morocco. I particularly like the super easy Marrakech Tagine Bread and the Berber Skillet Bread, which also easy but must be planned 48 hours in advance because there's a garlic starter to ferment. Other than the appearance, the difference between this and other pizza stones I've used are: * This product has handles on the sides, which are convenient, particularly for removing it from a hot BBQ grill. * It has a nice heft to it, which contributes to the pleasure of using it though I don't know (yet) if it improves cooking. My other round pizza stone is much lighter. * I like the glaze, which is common to all Emile Henry products. The glaze is shiny and easy to clean. Most of the time I need only to rinse and everything comes off quickly. Occasionally, when I've cooked a particularly sticky bread, I use a blue scrunchy with no soap...still very easy. The other thing I like about the glaze is that it gives me the impression that it is hygienic and and makes my food look appetizing. My other pizza stones are porous beige ones (the kind you see everywhere) and stain easily, giving the impression that they're dirty. I admit, this is probably more about how I feel than logic. A pizza stone is heated in the oven at 400 degrees, so what could be possibly living on there? But food is fun for me, and I like the clean-looking pretty glaze! I just did a head-to-head bake off between the Emile Henry and an inexpensive Made in China porous beige pizza stone. I used the Marrakech Tagine Bread, which cooks 20 minutes at 400 degrees. I put the stones in two separate side-by-side ovens and preheated both for an hour. I put two small loaves on each stone and baked for 20 minutes. When the timer rang, I lifted the the Emile Henry easily out of the oven by its handles. With the beige stone, I fumbled trying to get my fingers underneath the sides and I burned my finger on the oven rack. Performance-wise, they were similar. The bread baked on the Emile Henry was ready at exactly 20 minutes, as specified by the recipe. The bread cooked on the less expensive beige stone was not quite done, and needed to be returned to the oven for two more minutes. This is most likely because the Emile Henry is thicker and radiates and holds more heat. Oddly I have the opposite issue with Emile Henry baking dishes--they take a long time to heat up and so food takes *longer* to cook. Once both breads were perfectly cooked they were identical. Both had a golden-brown slightly crunchy crust on the bottom. Both were equally delicious! So overall, I would say that if you can afford it, you will get a lot of pleasure out of the Emile Henry pizza stone. But at least on this one test baking flatbreads I got equally good results using a budget product. UPDATE: Since writing this initial review I have also started making pizza on this stone. I preheat the oven at 500 degrees for 40 minutes and I get the same nice crunchy crust on this stone and on budget stones. My conclusion is that this premium product does not perform better than less expensive stones but it is equivalent in performance, and I like it for the handles and the easy-to-clean surface.