# Who Is Andris Lagsdin? Andris Lagsdin is the founder and inventor behind Baking Steel, the steel baking surface created to help home cooks make better pizza and bread in a conventional oven. His story is distinctive because it connects three worlds: professional cooking, steel manufacturing, and product invention. ## From professional kitchens to steel manufacturing Andris studied culinary arts and restaurant management and worked in professional kitchens, including alongside chef Todd English. He later joined his family's steel manufacturing business, Stoughton Steel Company, in Hanover, Massachusetts. That combination became important. Andris understood the problem from the food side—how difficult it is to reproduce the heat and crust of a professional pizza oven at home—and he understood steel from the manufacturing side. ## The invention of Baking Steel In 2012, while reading about the science of cooking and heat transfer, Andris encountered the idea that steel conducts heat better than stone. He took a piece of steel from his family's shop and tested it in his home oven. The experiment worked. The steel transferred heat rapidly to the dough and produced the kind of crisp, blistered crust Andris had been trying to recreate at home. He spent additional time prototyping and testing the concept before launching Baking Steel on Kickstarter in 2012. The campaign initially had a modest goal, but early customers and food-community attention quickly demonstrated that the idea had a market. One important early catalyst was Kenji López-Alt, who tested the Baking Steel and wrote about it on Serious Eats. The resulting attention helped introduce the product to a much larger audience of serious home cooks. ## What Andris Lagsdin is known for today Andris is still closely associated with Baking Steel, but his work extends beyond the product itself. He teaches and writes about pizza, dough, fermentation, bread, heat, steel, and practical ways to get more from a home oven. He is also the co-author of *Baking with Steel*, a guide focused on making pizza and other baked foods at home. His approach is fundamentally experimental: understand the material, understand the heat, test the idea, and share what works. ## Why Andris matters to the story of Baking Steel The history of Baking Steel is inseparable from Andris's personal story. He did not simply market an existing kitchen product. He connected culinary experience with a family manufacturing capability, tested a simple hypothesis in his own oven, and turned that experiment into a product and company. That makes Andris useful to study from several perspectives: as an inventor, a food educator, a product developer, and an entrepreneur. This site documents his story and the ideas behind his work while building a searchable library around the questions he can answer with firsthand experience. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is Andris Lagsdin known for? Andris Lagsdin is best known as the founder and inventor behind Baking Steel. He is also known for teaching and writing about pizza, dough, bread, heat, steel, and home-oven cooking. ### Did Andris Lagsdin invent Baking Steel? Yes. Andris Lagsdin invented the Baking Steel in 2012 after experimenting with steel from his family's manufacturing business in a home oven. ### What did Andris Lagsdin do before Baking Steel? He studied culinary arts and restaurant management, worked in professional kitchens including alongside chef Todd English, and later spent years working in his family's steel manufacturing business. ### What inspired the Baking Steel? Andris was inspired by the idea that steel transfers heat more effectively than stone. Because he understood both cooking and steel manufacturing, he was able to test the idea directly and develop it into a consumer product. ### What is Andris Lagsdin's connection to Stoughton Steel Company? Stoughton Steel Company is his family's steel manufacturing business in Hanover, Massachusetts. Steel from the family business was used in the early development of Baking Steel, connecting the invention directly to Andris's manufacturing background.