What we love: This has long been one of the best user-reviewed steels and those users are right. Heavy and unadorned, this simple slab of metal makes delicious pizza pies that are crispy and crusty in all the right places. It gets screaming hot fast and holds on to that heat beautifully, even with the oven door open for longer periods, trying to shuffle pies around with a pizza peel.

It’s versatile, able to double as a baking sheet for cookies or bread baking, or a cold platter (if you clean and freeze it first). It comes pre-seasoned, and caring for it is easy too. When it’s cooled down, wash it (you can use soap if you plan on re-seasoning it; otherwise, just rinse with water), dry it thoroughly, and oil it up to prevent rust. Its heft translates to incredible heat retention and evenly bakes pies with perfect bottom char.

What we’d leave: It’s pricey, and its weight (around 16 pounds) can make it awkward to handle. You may want to just leave it in the oven until you really need to clean it. Speaking of, it also needs to be dried completely after cleaning to prevent rust.

A great, budget pizza steel: The French Pantry Pizza Steel

What we love: At less than half the cost of The Baking Steel Original, this pizza steel performed exceptionally well, though with a few caveats. The model I used was a manageable 15 pounds and 3/16 of an inch thick, but it’s available in a few thicknesses, up to ⅝ inch (which ups the weight to 45 pounds and the price to $150), and a stainless steel option. It comes unseasoned, so it requires a little TLC before you can use it. Yes, seasoning a pizza steel feels a little unnecessary when so many preseasoned models exist at slightly higher price points. But in my experience, those pre-seasoned layers were prone to scratching with metal scrapers and still stained or held onto burnt crud. The thin layer of oil I put on the French Pantry steel before baking it at a high temperature for an hour still did the job and felt much more maintainable.