Pizza Peel

[Dr ROK]

I have a roccbox and really like the peel they provided with the oven. I've always liked the flavor of cornmeal toasting/burning on the stone and used it with my wooden peel since that's the only way I could keep the dough from sticking if I built the pie on the peel. With the Roccbox peel I've found I don't even need anything on the peel. It appears to have a "nonstick" surface of some type. It is very smooth and slick. It also has several holes/slots in it to reduce surface contact.

[Attjack]

Great thread, I always have problems getting it from the peel to the stone. I have a Blackstone and it is not the easiest to launch a pie on. I have been using a pizza screen but feel I will get a better pie if I can get it directly on the stone.

I've continued to have success using cornmeal and the shake and launch technique on the Blackstone. Maybe I'll try to film a video sometime.

I need to take more pics, this is from my first pizza on the blackstone. Marauderer, you've seen this picture before.



I just read on the PizzaCraft blog that a wooden peel is what you need to launch the pizza while a metal peel is far better to retrieve the pie. I'm going to test this in the near future as I have both types of peels, but have only been using the metal one that came with the Blackstone. I use a floured cutting board to stretch the dough, and top the pizza. Then I shake and launch onto a cornmeal covered peel. I strive for a perfect launch onto the peel because if it slides, it knocks cornmeal off in spots. Then when I do the shake test before final launch into the oven I find that it's sticking in spots which can lead to disaster. When that has happened I've had to perform the difficult task of lifting the raw pie, and tossing more cornmeal under the sticky spots.

@Amajeff99, in my opinion cornmeal is the way to go. Though I have had success with flour too. However I've also had terrible large grain cornmeal that was unpleasant to chew. So try to get a high quality cornmeal.

Before I had this pizza oven I used parchment paper on a pizza stone on a charcoal Weber. That literally takes 10x as long to cook the pizza. But the results were good (see below).

[Attjack]

To follow up my above post after making a pizza once a week I want to add that the wooden peel is indispensable for launching the pizza. I also use cornmeal. Then I use a metal peel to check the bottom and retrieve the pizza. I've had no disaster or near disasters. It's very easy now.