Piazza

A pizza peel is a flat blade on a long handle used to load a topped pizza into an oven, turn it during the bake and lift it out. Pizzerias often keep separate peels for launching and for turning or retrieving.

A perforated pizza peel has holes through the blade so excess flour and semolina fall away as the pizza is loaded. Less flour reaches the oven floor, which means less burnt residue and less smoke through a long service.

Aluminium peels are lighter, which matters when a cook handles hundreds of pizzas in a service. Stainless steel blades are heavier and more rigid, which some cooks prefer for sliding under a base cleanly. Both are used in commercial pizzerias.

Match handle length to the depth of your oven deck. A short handle suits a shallow deck or bench mounted oven, while a long handle is needed to reach the back of a deep wood fired or deck oven safely.

A pizza turner is a small round blade on a long handle used to rotate a pizza inside the oven so it bakes evenly. It is smaller and lighter than a launching peel, because it only needs to lift one edge of the base.