Has This Pizza Disaster Ever Happened to You?

This week I had planned to write about pizza. Four pies with perfectly chewy crust and gorgeous flavor combinations, created by my brother. The problem?

The pizza stone broke, in all of its perfectly seasoned glory. Has this ever happened to anyone? We’re talking split, earthquake style, into two halves!

Let’s be clear, there were three pizzas and they were outrageously good: a classic margherita, a sort of Greek style with artichokes, olives, and feta, and the best of them all — a white pizza with sweet Italian chicken sausage, Granny Smith apple, and chopped walnuts.

Apparently since my last visit home, my brother has become a sort of pizza whisperer. Toting several bags as he arrived at our parents’ house, he pulled out a peel and stone brought from his own kitchen. We’re not even talking like, a travel size pizza stone. This was his favorite, he’s been seasoning it for years, and he brought it to create a pizza fit for gods on Saturday afternoon.

No need to go into the boring, cheesy details of the most delicious pizza ever to grace my tastebuds, but suffice it to say my family gobbled these down like a three year old eating sugar cubes. Serious anticipation was building for the fourth pizza — a supreme — when this happened:

Major buzzkill. The saddest part are those beautiful ingredients! (You should see the photo of my father scooping mozzarella out of the oven with a spatula.)

I was shocked to learn that this is actually the second time my parents’ oven has destroyed a pizza stone. The temperature was certainly high, but it seems like any standard electric oven. Surely my super hot, unreliable gas oven would do damage like this before theirs, right?

Has this happened to any of you?