DIY Pizza Peel

As many teenagers do, I worked a summer in a pizza shop. Of all the tools in that tiny kitchen the peel was the most important and the one that took the most finesse to use. I had so much fun learning to use this wooden paddle to transfer sticky pizza dough into the oven and perfect pizza out of it that I decided to finally make my own. This was a fun, super easy project and it only cost about $20 for the wood. If you have the tools it's a great way to entertain yourself and build something useful. The design is definitely non-traditional but I love how it feels and looks!

The initial design took shape on the computer, because I can draw perfect circles and use cool fonts. Here it is:

After realizing I couldn't print this to size without tons of extra effort, I broke out the old protractor, a pencil and a long, thin piece of wood. Using the protractor I made the small curves, however, for the larger ones I used the piece of wood with a nail in one end and a hole 16 inches away from it where I put the pencil through. This neat trick allowed me to make perfect 16 inch diameter circles and therefore the rest of the design. After it was all drawn out on a big piece of paper I cut it out as the template for the wood.

Sadly I didn't take pictures of the process but it was pretty simple (sorta). I used a 5.25 ft piece of 5.5 inch by 3/4 inch thick piece of hard maple that I planed down to about 1/3 inch thick. Once the piece was planed I cut two 17 inch boards and one 26 inch board then glued them together according to the design. The boards were leveled and let to dry for 24 hours before I used a band saw to cut out the shape, a router for the top edge bevel, a belt sander to smooth it out and some hand sanding for the top and bottom edges.

Once sanded I used a soldering iron to burn in my favorite symbol and mineral oil to treat the board. Take good care not to use soap on this bad boy or you'll be tasting it forever. If you need a good pizza dough recipe head over here - and happy baking!