The number of ways to eat pizza is practically infinite. You can have it delivered. You can buy it frozen. You can eat it piping hot when it comes out of the oven. You can eat it cold when it comes out of the fridge. You can eat it with a knife and fork. You can fold it like a taco. You can cut it into triangle or square slices. You can eat it in a box. You can eat it with a fox. You can even make a restaurant-quality pizza in your own home. And what better way to celebrate National Pizza Day than by baking some delicious pies in the comfort of your kitchen? Here’s a list of gadgets that are absolutely necessary — and a few that are absolutely not — to make pizza at home.
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If you ask a pizza snob about their preferred way to cook a pie, you’ll probably hear something about wood-burning ovens. While this is undeniably a great way to cook pizza, it’s not exactly easy to get one of these ovens in your home. Well, thanks to the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven from Pizzacraft, you can make great pizza from the comfort of your own kitchen.
This stovetop pizza maker heats up quicker than a conventional oven and reaches 600 degrees Fahrenheit in just 15 minutes. The stove also features cordierite stones that trap heat — thus ensuring an even and crisp crust — and a moisture vent to prevent soggy slices. The one drawback of the Pizzeria Pronto Stovetop Pizza Oven is its size. While Pizzacraft claims that you can cook seven pizzas in an hour with this stove, you can’t cook a pie bigger than 12 inches.
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Any good pizza starts as good dough. While you can use a stand mixer with a dough hook, or even your hands, we recommend a good food processor. Not only will a food processor make the process of making dough easy, but these gadgets are also much more versatile than stand mixers. In fact, you can also use your food processor to chop up your toppings or make pizza sauce.
There are plenty of good food processors on the market, but we recommend the Cuisinart 14-cup Food Processor. This moderately-priced machine can handle relatively large batches and can make dough with a few pushes of the pulse button.
Sagaform Pizza Scissors ($18)
Pizza scissors are not essential. However, if you’re looking for a conversation starter or if you’re just a big fan of sporks and spork-like products, these pizza scissors might be exactly what you’re looking for. Made primarily of stainless steel, the Sagaform pizza scissors can save you seconds when it comes time to cut and serve your pizza. They even come with the word “Pizza” etched into the spatula, so you know exactly what they are supposed to be used for.
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While a wood-fired oven is ideal for cooking a pizza, a traditional oven works well if you use a good pizza stone. When picking out a pizza stone, you need consider size, material, and price. Clay and stone make great pizzas, for example, but they are difficult to clean. Steel stones, on the other hand, heat quickly and are easy to maintain. There are plenty of great options on the market, but the Old Stone Rectangular Pizza Stone is one of our favorites.
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Serious pizza makers might insist that a wood pizza peel should be used when placing your pie on the oven, while a metal peel is required to remove your cooked pizza from the flame. However, we only have enough room on this list for one more item, so which is better? If you can only get one, we recommend a wooden peel. The dough is less prone to stick to a wooden peel, they provide a nice surface to work on, and they’re nicer to look at.
The biggest problem with a wooden peel is that it’s thicker than a metal peel, which makes it a little more difficult to retrieve your pizza from an oven. Most wooden pizza wheels, like the Ironwood Gourmet Pizza Peel, are designed with slanted edges in an attempt to solve this problem.
