Pizza making technique

[Tscarborough]

Re: Pizza making technique

Cornmeal works if you are cooking at low temps, but if you are using Caputo and going for Neapolitan, as it sounds like you are, then you have to adapt the technique a little.

Form the dough on the bench with lots of flour. Don't be afraid of the flour.

Get it pressed out, then give it 1 or two over the palms to shake off the flour, and on to the peel.

Shake it to make sure nothing stuck. Dress it with sauce, give it a lil shake. Finish it all off, shake it and drop it in to the oven.

[oasiscdm]

Re: Pizza making technique

I noticed in a wfo restaurant the other day they stretch bars onto a wooden peel to let relax for however long they put toppings on and the pizzas simply slid off onto longer peel then into oven.

[oasiscdm]

Re: Pizza making technique

I noticed in a ego restaurant the other day they stretch bars onto a wooden peel to let relax for however long they put toppings on and the pizzas simply slid off onto longer peel then into oven.

[deejayoh]

Re: Pizza making technique

Prep the dough on the counter in a bit of flour. Then just wipe a bit of flour on your peel before you put the stretched dough on there. And shake it a bit to make sure it's still moving before you head for the oven with it. If any bit won't move, slide a bit more flour under that section.

Cornmeal works, but IMHO, it makes a mess. Nasty piles of burned black crumbs. Since you need a pile of flour on hand to stretch the dough anyway, I think it's more efficient to use that.

[mamaspizza]

Re: Pizza making technique

Is your peel metal or wood? I'm waiting for our oven to cure but watching many Italians make pizza on youtube. What they all seem to do is make the pizza on a floured wood peel and it slides off whole in the oven, then they use the metal peel for turning it around and removing it when it's ready. Not on purpose I decided to slide a pizza from my wood cutting board onto the back side of a heated cookie sheet in the convection oven. This has worked perfect the previous 2X.

[cobblerdave]

Re: Pizza making technique

G'day
Cornmeal works well but if the worst happens and you can't gently shake it lose pick up a corner of the pizza and blow underneath it it will separate.
Regards dave

[Yannick]

Re: Pizza making technique

At first I had the same problems you have.
What I do now is use corn meal. I pour some on the peel, place my dough on the peel and start preparing the pizza. Before I leave the kitchen, I shake the peel forward and backwards to make sure that the pizza slides, then I make my way to the oven and don't have any problem.
I have seen videos where they prep the pizza on the counter, then they load it on the peel. I haven't tried that yet.

[di11on]

Hi folks,

So I have my oven going great. I can make my Caputo based dough no problem. However, my technique appears to be lacking when it comes to actually getting the prepared pizza in the oven.

So, I make my base and put the toppings on. Getting it onto the pizza peel though, is a bit of a problem for me... the pizza usually gets deformed trying to slide it from the work surface onto the peel.

I've tried making the pizza on the peel, but then I have difficulty getting it off the peel in the oven... I usually have to shove it off which sends toppings to the four corners of the oven!

Anyone any tips? I see that pizza places usually make the pizza on a little round grill base. Do people use these at all?