Abstract: A pizza crust cooking utensil for use with a pizza crust batter to partially precook a pizza crust. The use of the utensil provides a more uniformly producible, less porous and more stable pizza crust which has better handling characteristics for home or commercial cooking, especially for cooking in a conveyor-type toaster or oven. The utensil includes two cooking plates which align to form a hollow cooking chamber in which the crust is formed as the batter is cooked. The invention is adaptable for use in a cooking appliance or a variety of ovens and has a transition region from the crust center to the rim to assure a well-defined rim and to stiffen the crust toward the rim for better handling. Channels extending between the center region to the rim area of the utensil enhance batter flow. Preferably, the generally planar center of the lower cooking plate is thicker to assure more complete, uniform and thorough cooking of the top surface of the crust.

Abstract: A cooking utensil including pan, base, and cover elements, each formed with annular outwardly extending flanges or lips about its periphery for cooperative stacking engagement to provide a portable oven or the like. The utensil is particularly useful for the baking of pizza or the like on a stove top, an electric hot plate, or over a camp fire. The base and pan elements have a specially configured construction including a plurality of openings in the sides thereof such that when stacked together, they cooperatively provide a heat-deflection chamber to direct the heat from a source below the base into an oven chamber formed between the pan element and its matching cover. The pan element also includes an annular trough or ridge to hold additional batter which, when heated, rises to form a thickened edge crust about the pizza.