A-Peel-ing

I've been doing a lot of bread baking and pizza making recently and one of the things I've been wanting is a large wooden pizza peel. The peel is a tool that lets you slide bread and pizzas in and out of your oven - very handy when using a baking stone. They come in wood and aluminum, and while I prefer the aluminum ones for retrieving the final delicious product, the wooden ones are much better for building pizzas and sliding the unbaked dough into the oven.

I knew exactly what I wanted, so I decided to make one to my own exact specifications. I love designing woodworking projects, and this was a super simple one - it took me all of 10 minutes to spec it out and draw it up in Google Sketchup.

My initial design

One of the things I've never understood is why pizza peel manufacturers don't mark up circular size guides on them - that would be very handy when stretching pizza dough. But this is my design, so I decided to just take a sharpie and mark out several popular sizes on it. I also wanted a square front so it could accommodate two loaves of bread at once.

Very handy.

I picked up a piece of 2'x2', 1/4" luan plywood for $3 to build a prototype. Some quick cuts, a bit of sanding and 10 minutes later I had myself a brand new pizza peel. Yippee!!!

While I was at it I made another one out of scrap MDF which will make a useful template if I ever want to make any more.

MDF template and plywood prototype with size guides

I applied a few coats of food grade mineral oil to the peel and it's ready to use. If it works well I may make another out of 1/2" birch or oak.

I love making stuff.