Many budding home pizza chefs know the satisfaction that comes from a delicious homemade pizza. However, these same people also know how frustrating it can be to successfully transfer a lovingly created pizza to and from a hot oven. All the time and effort that has gone into making dough and organising your favourite combination of toppings can go to waste when a sticky pizza base decide to stick to your bench top or ends up in a heap on a pizza stone.
Thankfully, over the centuries that people have been making pizza there has developed a realisation that a pizza peel can eliminate many of the these frustrations and maximise your success. A pizza peel provides a low friction surface from which an uncooked pizza can slide onto a scalding hot surface, and a thin, flat surface to successfully separate a cooked pizza from the cooking surface and transfer it to a cutting board. Pizza peels come in various shapes and sizes however the primary differences are that there are pizza peels designed from placing pizza into an oven, and those that are designed removed a cooked pizza form an oven.
It is widely accepted amongst home pizza aficionados that there is no better pizza peel for a novice pizza maker than the EXO Super Peel. However, the EXO Super Peel is generally a more expensive option than other varieties, so is it really worth you buying one?
The EXO Super Peel performs its job so well thanks to its use of a cloth material that acts as a conveyor to move an uncooked fully laden pizza from the peel to a hot oven. In this regard it is essentially the primary peel of this type in the market. The other examples available are of the more traditional variety – a wide flat surface with an integrated handle. However not all are created equal.
The primary difference in alternate pizza to the EXO Super Peel lies in the materials they are made from. The most common pizza peel variety is a simple wooden peel. A wooden peel is cheap, durable and has a low propensity for dough to stick to it. This makes it a good option for moving sticky uncooked dough.
Another common type is the metal pizza peel. Unlike those made from wood, a metal peel is solely designed to remove a pizza from a pizza stone or cooking surface and is not suited for moving uncooked dough. A variety that can fill both roles is a wood fibre pizza peel. These are both strong and thin, and like wood they have a good natural non stick property. Their thinness and the addition of a bevelled edge means that a wood fibre peel can also easily slide under a cooked pizza and separate it from a pizza stone.
Whilst a wooden peel can also be used in this way, a wooden peel is generally quite thick which makes this task more difficult. So is an EXO Super Peel worth buying? Well if you are looking for the best in the market for moving an uncooked pizza then the Super Peel is for you. However, if you prefer an all round device that can perform all functions pretty well, then a wood fibre peel, such as the ones made by the Epicurean brand, is the way to go.