Having the right tools and accessories is essential for cooking the perfect pizza. To bake the perfect pizza at home, you need high-quality pizza dough (made with bread flour), a pizza stone or steel, a hot oven, low-moisture mozzarella cheese and a good selection of toppings that complement your crust. Essentially, a well-crafted dough, a proper cooking surface and the right cheese are needed to achieve a crispy, melty result.
High-quality pizza dough can be homemade or store-bought, and it’s crucial for achieving the perfect bake. Opt for low-moisture mozzarella to avoid excessive water release, which can make your pizza soggy. Choose toppings that complement the flavor of your crust, and don’t overload the pizza with too many wet ingredients.
A pizza stone will help distribute heat evenly, while steel conducts heat faster, resulting in a crispier crust. To achieve proper pizza cooking, aim for the highest temperature your oven can reach, ideally around 500°F or higher.
Here are 12 tools and accessories that will help you to create delicious pizzas every time:
A peel is a tool bakers use to slide loaves of bread, pizzas, pastries and other baked goods into and out of an oven. This Pizza Pan Peel with Foldable Plastic Handle from Walmart is great for indoor or outdoor ovens. This perforated peel by Ninja, $29.99 on Amazon, is easy to lift and maneuver pizzas to and from your oven.
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A pizza stone ensures an even heat distribution on the bottom of the crust. The HexClad hybrid steel pizza stone gives you a crispy crust without needing a long warm-up. This stone features an aluminum core for fast, even heating and is oven-safe up to 900 degrees. Try the Thermabond square pizza stone, $44.99 on Amazon, for a durable stone that can withstand high heat.
Invest in an indoor pizza oven if you want a tool that can reach very high heat. The Ooni Volt 12 from Amazon is an all-electric pizza oven that can reach 850°F in 20 minutes. It can also cook a 12-inch pizza in 90 seconds and be used indoors or outdoors. The Cuisinart countertop pizza oven, $299 at Cuisinart reaches 700°F — the optimal temperature for cooking the crispy crust and bubbling the cheese on your pizza.
Original price: $12.98
A thermometer is a must-have for monitoring the temperature of your pizza oven. This kitchen infrared thermometer from Amazon gives instant temperature readings.
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A good-quality pizza cutter will make it easy to slice through even the thickest crusts. The Kitchy Pizza Cutter from Walmart helps you execute clean cuts quickly and precisely. This pizza slicer’s unique design easily fits in your hand and your cutlery drawer. The Ooni pizza cutter, $25 on Amazon, is another excellent option for cutting your pizza. The cutter has a high-quality stainless steel blade, ensuring sharp, precise cuts through even the crispiest pizza crusts.
Use a bench scraper to help portion out your dough balls and for many other kitchen tasks, like icing a cake. The OXO Good Grips stainless steel scraper and chopper from Walmart has a stainless steel blade and quarter-inch markings for easy measuring. This dough scraper, made of flexible plastic and $4.99 from Amazon, is excellent for cutting dough and getting it out of the bowl.
Use this flat, lightweight, perforated metal disc to crisp up your pizza’s crust. The screen’s mesh design circulates hot air around the pizza, resulting in a crispy crust. These pizza screens from Amazon are made from sturdy aluminum mesh that is rust-resistant and oven-safe, allowing you to bake and serve your creations directly from the oven.
Original price: $29.99
Use a wooden pizza peel for easier launching of your dough into the oven. Wood has a naturally non-stick surface, meaning the dough is less likely to stick to it than metal, allowing a smoother transfer onto the hot pizza stone. This gourmet pizza peel from Amazon has a soft, slanted edge that allows you to quickly launch (and scoop) your pizza fresh off stone. It is hand-crafted from Acacia wood. Try this Solo Stove wood peel, $29.99 at Macy’s, made of absorbent bamboo wood.
If you are serious about pizza making, an additional useful tool is a dough mixer. The Joydeem electric dough maker with ferment function on Amazon is a 250-watt dough maker that can knead dough in 15 minutes and finish kneading and proofing in 45 minutes. It has a stainless steel basin that is durable and easy to clean. It also has a microcomputer timing and a face-up touch panel.
Original price: $67
This Mandoline Food Slicer will help you slice your pizza topping faster than a knife. This mini mandoline, $8.97 Walmart, gets the job done and is easy to store.
This cookbook by Tony Gemignani is a comprehensive guide to making pizza, covering nine different regional styles–including Neapolitan, Roman, Chicago and Californian–from 12-time world Tony Gemignani. Or you could try the techniques highlighted in this “Mastering Pizza” cookbook by Marc Vetri, $17.59 on Amazon. The recipes have a variety of base doughs of different hydration levels, which allow home cooks to achieve the same results with a regular kitchen oven as they would with a professional pizza oven.
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Use a dough-proof box like these Ooni Pizza Dough Boxes to create a controlled environment where the dough can rise. The set comes with two boxes. These proofing boxes, $37.99 on Amazon, are easy to store.
