Pizza Pie Pizza Peel Contributed By Wendell Craig

If you look up "peel" in any standard dictionary, you'll find lots of definitions, none of which has anything to do with pizza! But I'm delighted to report today that the Pizza Peel has everything to do with pizza!

If you've ever stood in your local pizzeria and watched the pies being put into, moved around, and taken out of the giant pizza ovens, you've surely noticed that the workers don't use pot holders or kitchen gloves. Instead, they use a long-handled, wide wooden spatula-like implement that slides quickly and easily under the pizza, keeping hands safely out of the fiery oven. That's a pizza peel!

Aside from cooking and baking, my other favorite hobby is woodworking, and I've learned over the years that nothing can take the place of the perfect tool, designed for a specific job.

Oh sure, you can use a block plane to flatten a board; and you could get by with using a utility knife to round off the edges of that tool chest handle - but a jack plane (in the first instance) and a drawknife (in the second) will get the job done more quickly and easily - and better. So with the pizza peel.

Like most kids her age, Joanna, my nine-year-old daughter, just loves pizza. Any kind of pizza! Delivered from a local family-run shop or from any of the national chains, or even (shudder!) pre-baked and frozen from the supermarket.

In self defense, I began to bake our own pizza at home some time ago - sometimes completely from scratch, making home-made dough - but more often using fresh, packaged dough from the market's dairy section. The problem then became strategic design- how to get the freshly-constructed pizza from the kitchen countertop onto the pre-heated stone in the oven without spilling the toppings all over the kitchen floor (a big mess) and/or burning my hands on the oven rack or the stone (a big bilister). Enter the pizza peel. The perfect tool, designed and made for a very specific task.

How it works

On your well-floured work surface, simply flatten the ball of dough to the approximate size of your pizza stone, apply your favorite toppings (some kids even like cut-up hotdogs), slip the peel under the pizza, slide it off onto the hot stone and wait while your concoction becomes....PIZZA! You'll feel like a pro.You'll feel Italian.

The Pizza Peel tested is a well-made, handsome tool. Fourteen inches wide by sixteen inches long (plus the handle, of course, which I found to be just a tad too wide for easy gripping - so I shaved it down with my drawknife!), made of real wood, with a leather thong for hanging. It's pretty easy to take care of, too. Just wipe it off with a damp cloth or sponge (like any wooden object, it shouldn't be immersed in water), and maybe scrape off any bits of cheese or dough, and put it away.

If you make pizza at home as often as I do - or even if you do it rarely but want to do it right - you'll be pleased to have this special tool as a part of your well-equipped kitchen.