Why I Love my Pizza Peel

I haven’t had my pizza peel for long, but now I wonder how I ever lived without it.  Before I owned one, I thought that a pizza peel was only for pizza convenience – it makes it easier to put the pizza in and take it out of the oven.  How wrong I was.  It’s about so much more than that.  I can’t believe how much better the crust tastes when prepared on a peel.

Before I had the peel, I heated the pizza stone in the oven and then stretched the dough to size on the table.  I’d then take the stone out of the oven and transfer the dough to it, making sure not to rip it on the way.  Because the dough starts cooking as soon as it hits the hot stone, I’d have to quickly reshape the dough and then top it with sauce and toppings as fast as I could before putting it back into the oven.  The crust turned out fine using this method, but nothing special.

Now I prep my pizza entirely on the peel and slide it onto the stone while it’s still in the oven.  I find that the crust turns out much tastier this way, because it doesn’t have its pre-cooking time on the hot stone out of the oven.  The outside is crispier and the inside soft.  It almost tastes like a pizza crust you’d get from an actual pizza place, but not quite.  Each time we have eaten a pizza prepared on the peel, we have commented on how good the crust tastes.

I must say, I’m a fan of the pizza peel and won’t go back to my old ways any time soon.