Help, My Pizza is Stuck to My Pizza Peel!
The perfect baking stone or steel. The perfect temperature. The perfect pizza dough, the perfect sauce, the perfect cheese, the perfect toppings. All you gotta do is slide your pizza into the oven, and you’re mere minutes away from hot, delicious, homemade pizza.
You take your peel and insert it into the oven, giving it a shake to slide the pizza off. That’s when you realize: the pizza won’t budge!
There’s nothing more frustrating than getting stuck (pun intended) on the very last step of making a pizza at home. We feel you – I once got a text from my father telling me I was in big trouble for giving them a pizza stone without properly teaching my mother how to use a pizza peel, resulting in stuck pizzas, delayed dinners, and one mad momma.
To help ease your pizza’s passage onto your stone or steel, we’ve got some tips for you. Using a metal pizza peel can be especially tricky, so in this video, we focus on the best practices for using this specialized tool.
Tips to Prevent Dough From Sticking
- Prep your pizza dough on a separate work surface. Don’t knead or stretch your dough on the peel itself. Use a countertop or a silicone rolling mat, and make sure you sprinkle plenty of flour on your workstation before you get started.
- Coat your pizza peel with flour. The loose flour acts as teeny ball bearings, creating a movable layer between the dough and your peel. You can also use a little bit of cornmeal, but use it sparingly: if the cornmeal makes it onto your pizza stone, it can burn and smoke.
- Once your dough hits the peel, you have to work quickly. You only have a few minutes before your dough absorbs the flour and starts to stick to the metal peel.
- Periodically shake your pizza on the peel while you’re prepping it. It’s a good idea to check and make sure things are still moving throughout the process. If you notice a patch sticking, it’s much easier to slip more flour underneath before your pizza is loaded with toppings.
- To get the pizza off the peel, use a quick back-and-forth motion. Thrust your peel in front of you with a smooth motion, aiming for the middle-back of your stone, then quickly jerk it back. The pizza’s momentum will keep it moving forward, sliding easily off your peel and onto your stone or steel.
- Act quickly! You don’t want to lose too much heat from your oven by leaving the door open. But you also don’t want a metal peel to linger inside a hot oven too long. The heat can transfer to the metal peel, causing the pizza to start cooking even before it hits the stone! This is another cause of stuck pizzas.
Still need help? Check out some of our other pizza tips:
- No Mixer? No Problem. No-Knead Pizza Dough Recipe
- How To Fix Sticking Pizza Dough
- Store-Bought Dough: Who's Is Best
- All About Yeast
See what we are cooking today in the Pizzacraft kitchen - Instagram: @_Pizzacraft
17 comments
I own a pizzeria in NY. A wooden peel is a lot easier to transfer the dough to the stone than a metal one. Definitely make sure there is flour on the peel and also lift up the edge and blow under the pizza which creates less friction and allows it to slide right onto your stone.
I roll out and top my pizza dough on parchment paper. Then slide my peel under the paper and put the whole thing on my hot stone. The parchment paper burns a little on the outer edges not covered by the pizza but who cares. Pizza always comes out perfectly and never sticks.
Hi Mich! A lot of people have this problem. Dough can be finicky! We will be releasing another blog very soon about how to prevent dough from sticking to sones, but this quick troubleshooting guide might help.
1. My first suggestion is to ensure that your pizza stone is preheated correctly.
2. If the stones are properly heated and the dough is still sticking, it might be the dough its self. You may have dough that is too sticky. Try working some more flour into the dough.
3. The other thing that may be the issue is over loading the pizza with sauce and toppings.
4. Lastly I would make sure you aren’t trying to turn or move the pizza too soon. It is important to allow the crust to set and slightly crisp before you try to rotate it. Try waiting 5 minutes before trying to move it.
I am in desperate need of help please – I am having issues with the pizza sticking to my stone – can someone give me advice on what I can do or not do to keep this from happening in the future. I’ve lost two pizzas now due to the crust sticking to the stone – my husband has suggested I spray the stone with olive oil – but I hesitate to do that. Any advice and/or help would be greatly appreciated.
i learned the BEST way to get the pizza to the stone is make the pizza cold by placing it (while still on the peel of course) in the refrigerator. i had to leave the refrig door open and less than a minute the pizza began to move and was able to slide onto the stone. COLD dough is the secret.