Since childhood, I remember the bricks lying for some reason in a gas oven on the lowest sheet. And a childhood friend's house in the oven was not bricks, but cobblestones, the most natural. They look very similar to those used in baths.
I remember that in my childhood I asked the question - why are they needed there, and even got the answer that bricks and cobblestones carry a functional load, with them baking is better.
But only recently I thought - is it really so?
In general, the tradition of upgrading ovens with stones is understandable. Modern ovens, even with convection, even with top and bottom heating, are capricious and far from perfect.
I think everyone who has baked something at least once has come across the fact that, on the one hand, the oven “bakes” better, on the other - weaker, the bottom of the product may burn, and the top may not turn brown.
I have a suspicion that baking ovens are generally poorly suited - they are for baking meat, poultry and fish, for dishes in pots and in foil, in general, they are for baking, not oven.
Ovens heat up unevenly, do not keep heat, you cannot arrange baking "steam" in them, because ovens and steam do not hold much.
For baking, the experience of ancestors is ideal - an oven that heats up for a long time, but also cools down for a long time, in which the heat is evenly distributed.
So people tried to bring the oven "to mind" as best they could.
Only, to be honest, it turned out not very well. And all because using simple stones or bricks is not bad manners, but simply useless.
The stone needs a special, chamotte, it warms up evenly and evenly gives off heat, helping to turn the oven into a branch of a wood-burning stove.
These stones are now called baking stones, they can be bought in many stores.
Such a stone is placed on the bottom of the oven and warmed up - an hour and a half, and then, on a heated stone, you can already plant bread, pie, buns, or even put a form with a biscuit.
It turns out that the stone accumulates heat, and then gives it off evenly - with the entire surface, and therefore the baking tends to "up", not having time to spread in different directions.
Another plus - the stone does not allow the baked goods to burn, as it serves as a kind of heat exchange buffer.
The only drawback is that if something (for example, pizza filling) gets on the stone itself, it will quickly absorb fat, oil, sauce, and stains will appear. Aesthetics suffers, and yet there is a smell, quite pungent, until everything that has been absorbed into the pores of the fireclay material burns out. So it is better to lay baked goods not immediately on a stone, but first on baking paper, and only then on it.