Pizza peel

[Schielke]

The pizza peel that came with my pizza stone is horribly incompetent. It is about 4 inches wide and 6 inches long. This makes it terribly difficult to place any proper sized pizzas in the oven.

I did a search for pizza peels and found a few different models. The main difference being wooden or metal. It seems to me that the metal peel would work better due to being thinner and more heat resistant.

Thoughts? Why aren't all peels metal?

Ben

[Shiva]

The wooden peel is for placing the uncooked pizza in the oven (the pizza is less apt to stick to wood) and the metal peel is for moving and removing the hot pizza (won't burn).

[Schielke]

Ahh-ha!

Damn...now I need two peels. I was toying with the novelty of getting one of those 5 foot peels for my regular oven. It would look pretty sweet when I got pizza out of the oven, but I think I can get by without looking cool.

Ben

[CathyL]

I have a cheapo wooden peel, which works just fine. It's never in the oven (or on the grill) long enough to worry about charring or combustion.

Ben, removing a homemade pizza from the oven is so cool that no one will care what kind of peel you're using.

[Schielke]

I have a cheapo wooden peel, which works just fine.  It's never in the oven (or on the grill) long enough to worry about charring or combustion. 

Ben, removing a homemade pizza from the oven is so cool that no one will care what kind of peel you're using. 

Yeah, I was hoping the pizza would turn out good enough to make me cool.

But a sweet flame paint job on my peel couldn't hurt either.

Ben

[hjshorter]

We ordered a great wooden peel from Bowery Kitchen Supply. It's not 5 feet long, but it's pretty darn big.

Unless you have a wood-burning oven in your home (boy I wish I did) a wooden peel should be all you need.

[Dana]

I have a wooden peel, but am going to get another so that I 'll have 2. When making pizza, it, to me, is much easier to assemble the pizza on the peel, then put it in the oven, rather than assembling it on the board, trying to get it on the peel, then into the oven. If you're assembling on the peel, you can't remove the one that's in the oven cooking, hence the need for a second peel.

I hope that made sense.

My little family can eat them faster than I can make them!!!