Is there anything more elegant than marble? It’s beautiful and timeless, and the color can vary from snow white to creamy with lots of deep, gray veins, making each piece one of a kind.

But in the kitchen, marble is also prized for its cool demeanor. Professional pastry chefs have long used this stone as a secret weapon when rolling out pastry dough. Because it’s colder than room temperature, it’s the best surface for keeping buttery dough from getting overheated as it’s being worked with — which is essential for a flaky pie dough or a tender scone.

It also keeps dough from sticking to the surface. For home chefs who can’t afford the expense and maintenance of marble countertops in their kitchen, here’s a great alternative that’s a fraction of the price — a marble pastry board.

A quick search online and you’ll see the prices can be just as varied as the color. The biggest indicators are size, thickness and whether it’s natural or engineered marble (and if it’s natural, where it originates). For rolling out pastry dough, you want a board that’s at least 20 by 16 inches. At 24 by 16 inches, my marble board from Williams-Sonoma can tackle any job I throw at it ($139.95, williams-sonoma.com).

But I will warn you, a board that big is heavy with a capital H (but that’s real stone for you). My most recent obsession is making homemade pizzas with dough from Peter Sciortino’s Bakery in Milwaukee.

With just a light dusting of flour, pizza dough is super easy to roll out on marble. I even put all my sauce, cheese and toppings on on the marble board before transferring the whole concoction to a pizza peel before putting it in the oven.

In addition to pizza and pie dough, marble is great for rolling out cookie dough; making pasta, candy and biscuits; and tempering chocolate.

Even if you have marble countertops, a marble pastry board is great to have for serving purposes. You can heat it up in the oven at 200 degrees and move it back to the countertop to serve bread or anything else you’d like to keep warm. On the flip side, you can make it extra cool by chilling it in the fridge and using it as a charcuterie board.

However, be extra careful with knifes. You don’t want to cut or chop anything on marble because it can scratch. Other words of advice? Avoid drastic temperature changes (this can cause cracking); wipe up spills as soon as possible; never put marble in the dishwasher; and don’t let your marble board sit in water.

But if you’re a good rule follower and take care of it, your marble will look beautiful and perform like a champ for years to come.

I've made pizza for years and consulted a few recipes online, and this is my recipe for a foolproof Margherita pizza. I used a new local find, too — dough from Peter Sciortino’s Bakery in Milwaukee. You can find it at 1101 E. Brady St.

Also, because Roma tomatoes can make pizza a little watery, feel free to cut out the seeds after you slice them. I like the tomato slices whole because it makes the pizza just a tad juicy on top.

Recipe tested by Alysha Witwicki

Remove the pizza dough from the fridge and let it sit in a bowl, uncovered, for an hour. Preheat oven to 450 degrees with a pizza stone inside for at least 30 minutes.

Sprinkle a few tablespoons of flour on a marble pastry board. Divide dough in half, and place one half on the center of the board. Sprinkle the dough with a little flour and roll out until it is about 10 inches in diameter.

Evenly distribute about ¼ cup sauce over the dough. Top with half the mozzarella, half the tomatoes, half the Parmesan cheese and sprinkle with half the Italian seasoning.

Dust some flour on a pizza peel and slide the pizza from the marble board to the pastry peel. Slide the pizza from the pizza peel to the pizza stone in the oven. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until the crust puffs up and you can see it getting slightly golden brown around the edges. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with fresh basil.

Wait about 5 minutes before cutting and serving. Repeat the process with the other dough half.

Counter Culture zeroes in on a single food or ingredient (or sometimes, technique) to help readers broaden their horizons in the kitchen. Alysha Witwicki is a freelance food and lifestyle writer living in Whitefish Bay. Contact her at alyshawitwicki@hotmail.com. 

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