Monday, June 17, 2013

The Secrets Of Using A Wooden Pizza Peel

By Blaise Wynn


Using a wooden pizza peel isn't extremely difficult, but there are a few tricks of the trade that I'd like to share with you.

To start you have to always remember to include some type of flour or cornmeal on the wooden pizza peal. The types of flour I've spotted applied are your standard every day bread flour, rice flour, or you'll hear a lot of the pizza specialists using semolina flour. Many people also use cornmeal if you want. I don't really like the taste or consistency of cornmeal and I haven't detected much of a improvement between the different flours so I just normally stick with whatever flour I'm using for the pizza dough.

If you miss this first step, your pizza dough will cling to the wooden peel and make a gigantic mess when you attempt to move it into the oven. You also don't need a bunch of flour or cornmeal on the pizza peel; just a light dusting. All you have to do is spread a little bit onto the wooden peel and rub it into the peel with your hands.

Once your wooden pizza peel is lightly dusted you would need to add your dough to the peel and start building your pizza.

Once your pizza is built you want to make sure its not completely stuck to the peel. As we discussed above, if the pizza is stuck to the pizza peel, you're just asking for a huge disaster of a mess. When you try to move the pizza to the oven the dough will be folded over and your toppings will be all over the floor and oven. It's not fun.

Save yourself the trouble and after the pizza is built check it to make sure its not stuck. All you have to do is give the wooden pizza peel a little shake. Does the pizza slide around a little or does it not move at all? If it slides around, that's a great sign and you're ready for the next step. If it doesn't move at all, you've got a little work to do.

Occasionally getting your dough unstuck is as easy as just pulling up on the dough from the edge all around the circle of the pizza to get it unstuck. On occasion you can shake the wooden pizza peel a little harder without the toppings sliding off and the dough will detach itself from the peel. Some pros like to puff under the pizza to get it to unstick. I've never blown underneath my pizzas, but I have used the other methods with much success.

Once you know your pizza dough is not stuck to the wooden peel you are ready to move it to the oven. Here all you do is place the peel over the pizza stone and begin to shake the peel a little until the pizza begins to move from the pizza peel to the cooking surface (usually a stone).

Now your pizza is cooking and you're a couple minutes away from paradise.

I hope this post really helped you on your pizza making quest. Now all you require is a little bit of training, which is the enjoyable part and you'll be a specialist in no time.




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