Mr. Horseshoe has expressed a desire for a metal pizza peel for his upcoming birthday. What can I say - dude like his pizza. Do any Dopers have one of these, and if so, what would you like to tell me about it?
I’m specifically trying to find out what the differences are between aluminum and steel pizza peels. Is one more slippery than the other when moving the pizza? Does thickness/thinness matter much?
We have a baking stone in the oven, so I assume that the peel is solely to transfer the pizza onto and then off of it. If that’s the case, does it matter that aluminum transfers heat faster?
Any and all advice, suggestions, and comments would be welcome.
errr… that should be a ? instead of a ! in the title. Mods, if you have nothing better to do in your copious spare time, I’d love a fix… It looks like I’m hollering at people!
I used to work at California Pizza Kitchen, which uses a round, wood-burning, concave oven. There were two types of peels, a large flat one (which was essentially useless) and a much longer one with a tiny plate on the end.
If you want to give more details about the cooking situation, I can give more specific advice:
What type of oven
Size of pizza
Type and thickness of crust
Typical toppings (especially amount and type of sauce)
Electric oven (for now - we’re in a rental) and this would totally be for home use. 1 pizza at a time, please!
The other things on your list are … flexible. For example, he loves cracker-thin crusts and I love thick, doughy, bready crust. So we make both! (Not at the same time.) Sometimes red sauce, sometimes not, and we don’t go nuts with the topping amounts.
Does that help? And … may I ask what was so useless about the large flat one? That sounds a lot like what I’m looking at on Amazon right now.
Re: the one at amazon: that seems fine for single pizzas in an electric home oven.
Re: utility of the large flat peel: if you are making pizza using a hot surface like the oven stone, you have to monitor the heat on the bottom of the oven by looking at the color of the crust. The large headed peel is not good for this and is also not good for moving around multiple pizzas. The small headed peel is also useful for cooling down the bottom surface if it is not cooking evenly (we would soak a handtowel in water, wrap it around the peel, and then wipe the bottom of the oven to control its temperature.) Also, if the front surface is hotter/cooler than the back surface, the small headed peel can be used to easily rotate the pizza. With a large peel, you have to remove the pizza from the oven, rotate it manually with a spatula or something, and then replace it. With a small headed peel, it’s very easy to rotate multiple pizzas quickly. However, this is another disadvantage of the larger peel: if there is any moisture at all in the crust or on the peel, the crust will stick to it and you get oval pizzas.
Just about the only thing the large peel is for is for placing pizzas into the oven or removing them after they are completely cooked. The actual cooking part was done with the small peel.
You know, I really have no idea what verb you would use when using a peel. There was no special vocabulary for it. We talked about it as though we were doing it with our hand, like I did above (place the pizza, remove the pizza, rotate it, etc.)
But, regret brings opportunity! Let’s make a verb: peelify? peely? peelunker?
We have one. Just got it from a restaurant supply store. That’s probably your best bet. Don’t get anything fancy from Williams-Sonoma, just get the same ones the restaurants get.
We use one of these. Works quite well, as long as you wash the cloth between uses. If you don’t, then the dough sticks and you end up stripping the bottom out of your pizza during transfer to the oven. Ask me how I know this.
