Pizza Peel

[Tony Totten]

I have made myself two hardwood peels for assembling and then directly placing pizza in oven. What would be a good finish for the wood that keeps timber from staining and yet allows the pizza to slip off?

[Wookie]

Wooden Peels should, in my opinion, not be coated with anything other than oil. Other 'coatings/sealants' will probably burn. To get Pizza to slip off, just a liberal coating of flour is all that is needed. I use a wooden handled aluminim peel, seems to work well and the aliminium is light and has no ill effects from the heat after 12 months use.

Cheers

[Chef]

I agree. The peel should be bare wood, just use flour or corn meal and the pizza will just slide off. As for stains, we will wash and leave out in the sun to dry when needed.

[PizzaPolice]

Motion carried. Don't coat it.

[Wiley]

Here too, nothing but dry peel, bare wood and rice flour; in a pinch plain old wheat flour works, but after using rice flour, well I prefer rice flour by a large margin..
Wiley

[Chef]

Hmmm Rice flour; gonna have to try that. Why do you think it works better?

[Wiley]

Chef, I tried it because of a recommendation I heard /read here. And not surprising (because the info here on the forum is beyond compare) it worked very well. The grain is larger than wheat flour yet smaller than cornmeal. It is quite uniform of grain size and, as I am usually using a wet dough, regular flour tends to get damp and stick the dough to the peel. The rice seems less absorbant or perhaps because of the larger grain size it absorbs less. But I have yet to have a pizza stick to the peel since using it as my peel "lubricant".

Hope this helps,
Wiley

[dmun]

Why do you think it works better?

Corn meal is full of sugar: It's what sweetens your cola. The sugar in cornmeal promotes burning and bitterness at WFO temperatures. Rice flour can still burn, but not so readily.

Another hint: sand your bare peel smooth with fine sandpaper whenever you get persistent sticking.