Pizza Making Equipment

• Pizza stone: This circular or rectangular slab is made of stone or ceramic. It’s designed to mimic the floor of a restaurant's brick-lined pizza oven. Cooking your pizza directly on a hot stone will create a crisp crust similar to that of a pizza from a pizzeria. Pizza stones are sold in kitchen supply stores on their own or together with pizza peels (see below) for $20–50. As an alternative, you can also buy unglazed quarry or terra-cotta tiles from home improvement or tile stores. These tiles work as well as standard pizza stones, are cheaper, and can often be cut to custom sizes. Make sure you know the dimensions of your oven before purchasing a stone or tile, and buy the largest size that will fit in your oven.
   
  
• Pizza peel: Essential if you’ll be cooking your pizza on a stone, a pizza peel (pizza paddle) is a broad piece of wood or metal with a handle that’s used for sliding uncooked pizza onto your hot pizza stone and retrieving it once it’s cooked. It’s important to assemble your pizza on the peel itself because transferring uncooked pizza dough with toppings from your countertop to the peel is nearly impossible. (For instructions, see How to Make Basic Pizza Dough.) Pizza peels are available in wood, wood fiber, aluminum, and stainless steel and cost roughly $10–30. Wooden models require more care and maintenance than stainless but are more versatile: you can also use them as cutting boards or serving platters for appetizers or cheese at dinner parties. Stainless-steel peels are better if you’ll be grilling pizzas because stainless steel is flame resistant.
   
  
• Pizza pan: If you choose not to use a pizza stone, circular or rectangular pizza pans are the most common alternative. Most pizza pans are perforated to allow hot air to reach the bottom of the pizza dough directly, yielding a crisper crust. Seek out pans made of heavy aluminum, as it conducts heat better than stainless steel and will not warp like thin aluminum. Certain pizzas, such as deep-dish and Sicilian varieties, must be cooked in deep pizza pans or in sheet pans.
   
  
   
  
• Stand mixer: Though not required for pizza-making, a stand mixer equipped with a dough hook will make it much easier to knead your pizza dough. Stand mixers also come with numerous other attachments and excel at many other baking tasks, such as creaming, mixing, and whipping. Because of their size and weight, stand mixers can be difficult to move and store, but their utility is unrivaled. They are sold in a variety of sizes, but most home cooks find the five-quart capacity model appropriate for their needs. Models can have 250–1,000 watts of power and can cost $30–900.
   
  
• Food processor: This tool is an adequate substitute for a stand mixer for mixing and kneading pizza dough. Food processor blades don’t knead dough quite as well as a stand mixer’s dough hook, though, so you’ll need to finish kneading your dough by hand for five minutes when using a food processor (See How to Make Basic Pizza Dough for detailed instructions.)
   
  
• Dough scraper: Also called a pastry scraper or bench scraper, this is a thin, flat slab of stainless steel or flexible plastic that lets you divide dough easily into portions and move the portions without handling them with your hands. A dough scraper is also useful for cleaning work surfaces.
   
  
• Pizza cutter: Also called a pizza knife or pizza wheel, this tool is used to divide finished pizzas into slices. To preserve the edge of your cutter’s blade, avoid cutting a pizza while it’s still on the stone or in the pan. Instead, transfer it to a cutting board first.
   
  
• Cheese grater: If your pizza recipe uses a soft cheese, such as fresh mozzarella, you can tear the cheese by hand. But hard and semihard cheeses such as Parmesan, pecorino, and provolone are best handled with a cheese grater. Box graters feature different-sized holes for both shredding and grating. The tiny blades of Microplane graters and rotary graters reduce these cheeses to fine, pillowy piles that are best sprinkled on hot pizza only after it’s been removed from the oven. Otherwise, the cheese may burn. (For recommendations on how and when to add cheese to pizza, see How to Add Toppings to Your Pizza.)
   
  
• Rolling pin: A rolling pin is adequate for shaping pizza dough if you’re not comfortable shaping and stretching it by hand. Keep in mind, however, that using a rolling pin will push out much of the dough’s air and yield a flatter, denser pizza crust.