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Every nerd loves their gear. Here are some of our favorite pizza tools and gadgets, guaranteed to up your homemade pizza game. If you’re a Kit.com user, our Pizza Making Kit can be found here.
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The cooking surface may be the single most important item needed to make great homemade pizza. It’s what gives our pizzas the crisp bottom that we love. Without a stone or steel (see below), the cheese and toppings will become overcooked before the bottom can crisp up.
Same idea as the stone (see above). Steel is less porous and has better heat conductivity (translation: it cooks the bottom side of the pizza a little better, quicker, and more evenly than stone). Steels are more expensive and heavier, but well worth it to level-up your homemade pizza game.
Another option for a great, crisp pizza crust is cast iron. Similar to steel, this pan conducts heat very well and will be a game-changer for your homemade pizza quality.
The wooden peel is used to move the pizza into the oven. With a little flour mixture sprinkled on top, you can lay a stretched pizza dough down, top it, then slide it onto your cooking surface.
While you can use a wooden peel to pull a pizza out of the oven, a metal one is better because it’s thin and slides under the pizza very easily. However, it does not work so well sliding an uncooked dough into the oven (the dough will stick to the metal pretty easily), so if you can only get one peel to start with, go with a wooden one.
These are one of the most helpful tools on the list. They make it easy to scoop dough out of a bowl. They work miracles cleaning up and keep you from ruining sponges with wet dough. And you can use them for tons of stuff around the kitchen – not just pizza.
This tool does two important jobs in the pizza making process: first, it’s perfect for cutting your large (bulk) dough into smaller sections for dough balls. And second, it cleans counters like magic.
You can obviously use whatever pizza cutter you want – this one is just fun and red.
This scale is very sensitive, so you can use it to measure ingredients like yeast and salt, which sometimes call for less than 0.5g. A larger kitchen scale will not be able to accurately measure small weights.
You’ll need a scale like this to measure your heavier ingredients like flour, water, etc. The great thing about a scale like this is that you can put a bowl right on and measure into your mixing container.
You can absolutely use yeast packets. But it’s really nice to have a jar of yeast in the fridge waiting anytime you need it. And it’s cheap to buy in bulk like this.
Filled with helpful tips and great recipes, Tony Gemignani’s Pizza Bible is a fantastic addition to your cookbook collection. We particularly like his “home hacks” like thawing frozen dough in a bowl of water or adding dry malt for better crust browning in a home oven.
Solid recipes and beautiful photography make this book a great choice. Many pizza styles are presented along with clear instructions and techniques.
This is a new book (released 2019), but seems to be the most comprehensive (not to mention beautiful!) book specifically about pan pizzas. If you’re interested in making this kind of pizza, it’s a solid choice.
