You don’t need a bunch of fancy equipment to make pizza. Here is what I’m using at the moment:
Oven and Stone
This is the oven that we have in our kitchen and it makes some great pizzas:
I crank up the oven to its maximum temperature of 550°F and it also has a convection setting which I turn on. A 12" pizza at this temperature takes about 7 minutes too bake for a plain pizza or when using dry toppings. I goes up to around 8 minutes when using wet veggies.
It takes a full 30 minutes for the oven to reach that temperature and then I let the pizza stone pre-heat for an additional hour. So the oven goes on 90 minutes before the first launch. Plan ahead and start that oven early.
Over the holidays I made a lot of pizza at Terri’s parents house for dinner one night. Their oven only gets up to 500°F and doesn’t have a fancy convection setting. The pizzas still came out great but it may have taken slightly longer to bake.
If you are baking a lot of pizza, two stones helps things go faster. Alternate baking between the two stones instead of baking two at once. They need some time to recharge the heat after a pizza comes off. If you try to bake pizzas back-to-back on the same stone, the crust underneath won’t bake properly and will disappoint.
My father gave me that stone. I asked him where he got it but he could not remember. I’ve known two people who used stones that cracked when baking at a full blast temperature. If that happens, just buy a beefier stone.
Scale
You don’t need a scale, but I started using one at the very beginning of this pizza journey. We already had one in the house and I find it much easier to measure using it.
There is nothing fancy about it. It’s not accurate enough for yeast but everything else seems fine. I might add a smaller scale at some point in the future.
Peel
You need some way to launch the pizza in the oven and some way to pull the pizza out of the oven. I started with this peel that my father gave me:
It is great for pulling out the pizza. It is also great for rotating the pizza. It is not great for launching the pizza. I tried for a bit but it was just more of a hassle than it was worth. It was just too easy to get that pizza stuck and not wanting to move. As Brad Leone says, “it can sense your fear”. The solution is to also buy a wooden peel:
Sprinkle down a little semolina flour on the peel before putting down the dough. It should slide off nicely every time. If you only want to buy a single peel, get the wooden one. You can always use tongs to rotate and pull out the pizza if needed.
Dough Scraper
I highly recommend one of these:
A small film of dough can develop on the surface you are working on. Use this to easily scrape that, or any other foreign particles found, off of your counter top. And it is also great for cutting the dough to portion it into separate balls.
Pizza Cutter
Yes, you could use a knife. But if you are making pizza from scratch, you need to impress your friends with your pizza cutter skills. This is a cheap one so when I cut, it doesn’t look so skillful.
Pans
I picked these up at the Sysco Cash and Carry:
I didn’t plan on getting these. I just happened to be browsing the aisles there and came across them. In the same aisle they have peels, screens, and drinkware that makes you nostalgic for the in-room Pizza Hut dining experience.
Shakers
These are also available at the Sysco Cash and Carry. Niles, Mac, and I were adamant that pizza must rated using a cheese pizza. The only toppings allowed are on the table. These are those toppings:
