Maximum width of pizza peel?

[coffee]

I am almost finished with my gymball&vermiculite oven (looks almost exactly like this: http://www.goodshomedesign.com/wood-...-ball-for-135/), and now I need a pizza peel. My oven's opening is 37-38 cm wide and the peel I am looking at is the Rösle Pizza Server which is 30,5 cm wide. That leaves me with about 3 cm of freedom on each side of the peel.

Will that be too narrow and annoying to use, or is the peel width/oven opening ratio OK?

[Gulf]

Be careful with any size peel that you insert into your oven. That design scares me. A peel touching the sides could dislodge the soft vermicrete along with the needles. That design has got a lot of air time but it was thought through poorly imo.

[coffee]

Be careful with any size peel that you insert into your oven. That design scares me. A peel touching the sides could dislodge the soft vermicrete along with the needles. That design has got a lot of air time but it was thought through poorly imo.

I totally agree, I want a rounded peel, but I am having a hard time finding one for a reasonable price here in Sweden....

[SableSprings]

Coffee, there are many good examples in the forum of people making their own pizza tools. I use a "standard" wood peel for loading pizza into the oven and my banjo (round) peel for turning and bringing the cooked pizza out of the oven. For a homemade banjo peel, all you really need is to find a piece of stainless steel that you can cut a disk about 20 cm in diameter. I believe I read in one of the links below, that a thickness of about 1.5 mm stainless steel was about perfect (1 mm was not quite stiff enough). Use a strip of metal to connect the peel and a wood handle and you're pretty close to having a workable banjo peel. Remember that being functional here is all you really need...it doesn't need to be expensive or a piece of art. I bet if you sat around with a couple of friends and explained what you needed and how it was used...the group would be able to come up with all sorts of simple and functional designs from readily available (and inexpensive) materials.

Here's two threads to look at with many examples of homemade tools.

https://community.fornobravo.com/for...off-your-tools

https://community.fornobravo.com/for...tool-or-gadget

In post #45 of the second link, I added a pdf file of the 12 basic tools I use all the time for prepping dough and baking in my oven. Hope that helps!

[Gulf]

Coffee,

Sorry for the above short reply and for going sort of off topic. I have to be short and to the point when using my iphone. But, the dangers for that oven design are REAL!. I'm back at my computer now. So, I will elaborate. Portland cement will degrade at the temperatures that our ovens achieve. That will cause the granuals of vermiculite to eventually fall out on to your food. That may not be a problem in itself. But the addition of stainless stell needles is a very real danger. SS needles are ok in some dense refractory cements that have a higher temperature rating. Those materials have the abilty to grab the needles and also to survive the oven tempertures. The problem with portland based vermicrete is that it is not dense. It can not grab the needles as is needed for the reinforcement as they were intended. Needles in vermicrete are usless. In the infamous "gymball&vermiculite oven" they will eventually fall out on to your food as the oven degrades. That is a clear and present danger imo.

just sayin"

[pizzaadmin]

I am almost finished with my gymball&vermiculite oven (looks almost exactly like this: http://www.goodshomedesign.com/wood-...-ball-for-135/), and now I need a pizza peel. My oven's opening is 37-38 cm wide and the peel I am looking at is the Rösle Pizza Server which is 30,5 cm wide. That leaves me with about 3 cm of freedom on each side of the peel.

Will that be too narrow and annoying to use, or is the peel width/oven opening ratio OK?

Its nice design but peel design in round shape will make it more comfortable to use.

[Ible]

Sorry if I am seeming to be off topic but Gulf is correct, I had both things happen to me. I was served a danish aboard a vessel, a small nail, that held the brush head the baker used to baste the danish with butter worked its way out and ended up on my pastry, on the first bite I broke two of my teeth and had to be air lifted to a dentist, this was no joke and tens of thousands in dental work that did not hold. with that experience behind me, years latter I bought a metal domed pizza oven off Craigslist , did not see the small holes in the metal dome, built my fire, got the oven hot, and place in the pizza, a few min latter out they came, looked great, but were crunchy, the Portland cement when hot turned to sand, and was now sprinkled on the top of my pizza, crunchy crust... check, crunchy toppings.. check... lets just say it wasn't edible.... and into the trash it went oven and all, so Gulf is absolutely correct. Its hard to start over, its time and money that has been spent and you want to see the oven work, but the risks are too high and real to ignore. I not the person that normally gives any warnings, but I thought you should hear it from someone that has been affected by both of the claims Gulf brought up.