Customer Reviews

Mario Batali The Italian Kitchen Collection Pizza Peel

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've only had this a short time and I like it a lot. The price is good and the quality is good. The handle is clamped to the blade by a large wooden knob which screws on from beneath. You can loosen the knob to fold the handle or even remove the handle completely (nice for putting the blade in the dishwasher). The way it's designed though the knob attaches on the bottom which makes it so that the Peel can't be laid flat (the knob sticks out quite a ways below the blade). This can be fixed by putting the handle on upside-down and screwing the knob on from the top. Having the knob on the top isn't too bad, but I wish the handle was simply designed to mount with the knob on top so that it looks nicer when attached that way.

Update 9/8/2009: It's been a year and a half now and I'm still happy with this and wouldn't change anything in my review or rating. I still wish the handle was a better design, but it isn't bad and it's "fixable" as I mentioned in my original review.

I have been making my own pizza for years now, using a wooden pizza peel to prepare the pizza after placing cornmeal on the peel to allow it to easily slide off the peel and into the oven, either onto a pizza stone or a cast iron pizza pan. I thought I would give this a try after moving to a new place and needing a new pizza peel. This pizza peel, regardless of the amount of cornmeal placed on it, holds onto the pizza like an old friend. There is NO WAY you can get a prepared uncooked pizza off that peel and into the oven in one piece. It is an absolute disaster. I am going to buy another good old wooden one right after this review. The one thing this MAY come in handy for is to act as a $30 spatula to take the already cooked pizza off the stone. Otherwise, please don't waste your money. One ruined pizza is one too many.

I like this product b/c the handle is long enough, but it can be "collapsed" for easier storage. This is the only pizza peel I have owned, so I don't have a comparison with a wood one....
This is what I do: I put a lot of cornmeal on it, roll out the dough (I like a thin crust), put on the red sauce base, and then I slide it off onto the pizza stone that is in the oven (then add the other toppings). I have discovered that that works fine almost every time... if you fully "dress" the pizza before trying to slide it on the stone, sometimes it sticks (b/c it's too heavy, I think) - once we just had to have a calzone instead of a pizza ....
Overall I am happy the purchase b/c it allows me to roll the dough out for a thin crust, instead of trying to spread/pull it out while on the preheated pizza stone.

With the help of other customer reviews, this peel was my choice. It works wonderfully and it is easy to store because the handle screws off. My loaf of "artisan" bread rose on coarse corn meal right on the peel. When it was time to bake, my hands didn't have to pull out the rack or get near the heat and the bread dough slid right off onto the cooking stone. (If you are at all concerned about dough sticking to the peel or you don't want to use cornmeal, put a piece of parchment paper on the peel, plop on the dough, and slide the paper and dough onto the baking stone. The paper will not burn and is easy to remove from the cooling loaf.) Removing the loaf was easy with the peel, too. I recommend this fine tool.

This peel is very nicely designed and works well, but only when used as intended. It is designed to remove the pizza from an oven, not to put the pizza into the oven. The carton that it comes in specifically says "Safely Remove Pizza From Oven". It does not reference using the peel to put a pizza in the oven. As noted by other reviewers, pizza dough tends to stick to a metal peel like this one, even when corn meal is used. A wooden peel should be used to place the pizza in the oven because the dough slides more readily on wood than on metal. A metal peel works best to remove the pizza when done because it is thinner than wood and thus slides under the pizza more easily than its thicker, wooden counterpart. Peter Reinhart, author of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice", notes the same and recommends the use of wooden and metal peels in these specific manners in his book on pizza titled American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza (p. 169).

I use an Epicurean brand 23-by-14-Inch wood/paper fiber Pizza Peel dusted with corn meal to put the pizza in the oven and that works well. (Epicurean Cutting Surfaces 23-by-14-Inch Pizza Peel, Natural). Because the Epicurean peel is a pressed wood/paper fiber, it is thinner than a traditional wood peel, so the pizza doesn't have a big slide or drop down to the stone. That makes it easier for me to slide the pizza onto the stone with less risk of having a topping slide or spill. As well, the Epicurean will not warp or crack like real wood can. Before trying to place the pizza in the oven, and while you are still standing with the peel over the counter, it helps to give the peel a quick, short jerk or two to get the pizza sliding on the peel. After the pizza is completely loose and able to slide freely, then move to the oven, open the door and slide the pizza onto the stone.

I use the Mario Battali peel to remove the pizza when done. Because it is metal, the Battali peel is thinner than even the Epicurean wood fiber peel, so it is easier to slide under the cooked pizza. The Epicurean peel, though thin, is tougher to get under the pizza without pushing the pizza towards the back of the stone. It can be done, but it takes me a couple of tries. The Battali metal peel, on the other hand, slides effortlessly under the pizza on the first try.

I used to use a long, metal spatula to remove pizzas when I only made neo-Neapolitan style pizzas which were only seven or eight inches in diameter. Now that I also make larger, twelve to fourteen inch diameter pizzas, even a long, metal spatula is not sufficiently wide or long for such larger pizzas and it can require a bit of balancing. Although it means I have two pizza peels - one wood fiber Epicurean to place the pizza in the oven and one metal Battali to remove it - I like the ease of use provided by having a specialty peel for each step. Yes, there are other ways to get a pizza out - spatula, tongs and sliding onto a plate or cookie sheet, but I like the ease of using a "purpose-built" peel for each step. The folding handle also makes this item easier to store then many peels and the handle itself is quite comfortable in the hand. I find it very useful and well-designed.

This pizza peel is wonderful. We put our pizzas on the grill- and this one has a nice long handle so I can avoid getting burned.
I love that the handle folds so I can store it easily- and prefer the metal peel for easy cleanup.

I bought the "artisan book in 5 minutes..." book and wanted to try this tool out. When I bake breads on baking stones, I preheat the oven to 450 and it's quite hot. The regular pizza peel i saw at the store just didn't look like it would work...at least not for me, an amateur baker.

I wanted one that looks and acts like a huge spatula! The one that can put in the dough as well as take it out of the hot oven. This does what I wanted it to do. Metal end is sharp enough to slide it under the baked bread so you can take it out.

I put generous amount of cornmeal on the metal. Then I put the shaped dough on it. I leave it set for about an hour or so to do the final rising then shove it (literally shove it!) onto the hot stone.

As long as I don't get skimpy on cornmeal, the dough doesn't stick.
I'm glad I bought this. It makes bread making fun.

One word of caution....when you use this to take the bread out, make sure you don't move too fast. Freshly baked bread can fly off the peel onto the floor. When I first used it, I got too excited about the perfect bread, I flung the bread out... Since it was just for us, 5-second rule applied.

It's March 14th....
We have been using this just about every day for our bread and it's been working out PERFECTLY. It was a very good investment. I hang it from our pot rack holder. It also cleans up very easily.

Good quality peel and the folding handle is a nice plus so you store it easily. I did scratch it a bit trying to help a pizza off the peel onto the baking stone using a metal spatula, but nothing major. I now use plastic utensils with it.

I have yet to master getting an uncooked pizza off it. I dust the peel with corn meal, and use a drier dough that doesn't stick as much, but I usually still have to help it a bit to get it into the oven.

I was confronted by a bewildering selection of pizza peels when trying to choose one as a gift for my bread-baking sister. I chose this one because I thought the folding handle would be an advantage - and it definitely was. It is well made and can fit into a cupboard space the size of a cookie sheet - how do people store those ones with a non-folding handle? Plus, the metal surface is easy to clean, and it works just great in depositing and removing the loaves of bread from the oven.

Advertised as stainless, but it is a low grade sheet aluminum. To Amazon's credit, Amazon immediately issued a prepaid credit return voucher and credited me purchase price plus shipping and my phone request for a refund took all of about five minutes including hold time. Maybe this is a newer version that has superseded the advertised one, and maybe the earlier reviews were of an earlier product that was solid stainless. But the one I received in October 2009 was a cheap piece of sheet aluminum.