Pizza Tools for Success

It can be daunting at first to venture into baking your own pizzas, but I’m here to tell you, it’s really easy as (a big pizza) pie! I didn’t bake my first homemade pizza until we were locked down in 2020. I think the very first time was in the spring, but we got our groove on making them on a regular basis by July.

It was at the same time I was teaching myself how to nurture and use sourdough starter in recipes as a leavener, so I don’t have much experience with regular gluten-free pizza because the minute I bit into a gluten-free sourdough pizza, there was no going back! It was hands down one of the best kitchen memories from 2020, and we made a lot that year 😀

Kitchen Scale

A basic digital kitchen scale will be key to weighing out your ingredients as well as your dough balls when it comes to Pizza preparation.

I’ll be the first one to admit how much I resisted moving over from measuring cups and going from a volume-based approach to actually getting on the scale wagon. I don’t know why because it is absolutely essential to getting your recipe fool-proof! It’s not only a time-saver, but also gives me total confidence I’m using the right amounts. So go on, and get your kitchen scale boogie on, trust me, you’ll thank me later 😉

I personally have gone through a few in the past year alone. Currently, I’m loving three different ones. The first is for my sourdough starters, OXO Good Grips 11-Pound Stainless Steel Food Scale. I don’t think it’s technically superior (I could be very wrong), mostly I like the form factor since I use le parfait jars and the lids need to be able to fit on the scale. It is my most expensive scale, pricing now at $50.

My second scale is a gram scale called Weigh Gram Scale Digital Pocket Scale. When making some pizza recipes, the amount of active dry yeast is very important. I didn’t convert over to a gram scale until Christina Tosi emphasized how helpful it is for her, so I caved and took her recommendation and use it on a weekly basis, if not hourly when recipe developing! It’s good for items like salt, leaveners and seasonings you want to get just right.

Then I have a fairly inexpensive bonus scale that I can have when I’m taking over the kitchen and want to have separate work zones. My only quip about this one is it is great when the battery is new, but then doesn’t give you any warning that it’s needing new batteries, which can be a hassle if you’re measuring multiple items at one time.

Rolling Pins

So I’ve also tried a few different rolling pins during lockdown, lucky you! The story goes a little like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. First, I started out with my gorgeous olive wood one that was tapered on the ends, but that was too long.

For pizza, we’re only getting up the dough to stretch to about 13 inches in diameter, on the peel, so it’s much nicer to have something more size appropriate. I bought a straight edge wood rolling pin, but then learned that what I really wanted was a metal rolling pin. I heard Wolfgang Puck first suggest this on his MasterClass (which I highly recommend by the way!). While I couldn’t track down a perfectly straight-edged metal pin, I did find this one that works pretty well: Stainless Steel Professional Tapered French Rolling Pin.

Pizza Peels

Pizza peels are essential for gluten-free pizza dough since it’s going to be the surface you roll the dough out on before sliding it into the oven. I haven’t tried too many different kinds – there’s a ton on the market. I can tell you that this trusty Chef Pomodoro Peel has been our lifesaver from day 1 and won’t come close to breaking your bank account either. I’m not a sales representative or anything, so please do your own research, but I find that the 12 x 14-inch size works really well for 250g balls of dough.

Steels over Stones

There are tons of pizza stones, steels, and pizza baking gear of all kinds on the market that promise pizza wonders in your very own oven. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. I know I did when I first pondered on how in the world I would go about making my own pizza. 

Given that my very first job was at a pizzeria, I knew firsthand how critical the oven baking process is – and anything that boasts of a good workaround would be nonsense. But thanks to lockdown, our family has had plenty of time and motivation to experiment and perfect our homemade Pizza Nights! 

When we first started, we tried out our luck using a Ceramic Chef Pizza Stone and a Pizzacraft ThermaBond Baking and Pizza Stone for Oven or Grill. Overall, anything was considered great, but since it was such a considerable improvement, with little investigation or research, we couldn’t resist a good googling. What piqued our curiosity the most and has become our trustiest of all tools which is a Pizza Steel. I can’t tell you what a significant difference a steel makes. (Not to be confused with “Dinah Washington’s “What A Difference A Day Makes” although that would go beautifully while rolling out your dough).

In Comparison, the stone felt like it was good at drying out our pizza bottom, whereas the steel, oh man, that was like turning our bicycle into a rocket-ship, it took our pizza into a whole new realm of taste, texture, and wow-factor!

We have since become somewhat steel junkies. We have a couple of the following steels literally lying around our kitchen or in the oven any given time.

• NerdChef Steel Stone: 16″ x 14.25″ x .1/2”, 32lbs
• The Original Baking Steel: 16” x 14” x 1/4”, 16 lbs
• Conductive Cooking Pizza Steel: 20” x 14” x 3/8″, 29.9 lbs

As of June 2021, The good folks over at Don’t Waste Your Money have taken the time to provide their thoughts on which NerdChef is best here: The Best Nerdchef Steel Stone – 2021. I won’t deny that the stone is heavy. I would normally be sharing pics of ours, but we chose not to pack it while in Colorado for a chunk of 2021 (while I’m writing this post), so it’s good to see what others think about the lighter weight alternatives.

If you are loving your newfound baking powers using Steels, I recommend checking out Andris Lagsdin’s book “Baking with Steel: The Revolutionary New Approach to Perfect Pizza, Bread, and More”. It’s full of inspiration and useful tips, especially helpful to get your confidence levels rising in tandem with the temperature in your kitchen once you get going! I also follow him on Instagram.

Pizza Choppers, Cutters, and Slicers

Honestly, don’t buy anything more than you need to. This kind of item is more for the fun of it than anything. We’ve managed with the regular slicer, but do find that if there are a lot of toppings, can get messy quickly so we’ve recently opted to try our hand at this 14″ Pizza Chopper. We’ll be sure to let you know how it works out!

Please feel free to add which tools help you most when making your pizzas, we’d love to know!

Related Recipes

• San Marzano Tomato Pizza Sauce
• Gluten-free Pizza Capricciosa alla’Mamma
• Gluten-free Sourdough Pizza all’Santorini