Whether you or someone you love enjoys baking, eating, or serving pizza, here are some tools, gadgets, and ingredients perfect for the pizza lover in your life.
12 Gifts for Pizza Lovers
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12 Gifts for Pizza Lovers
I get asked all the time about the tools I actually use, so here’s the list. These are the reliable, well-designed pieces that make cooking at home easier, faster, and a lot more fun—whether you’re a weeknight cook or a full-on food nerd.
1. An Outdoor Pizza Oven: The Ooni Koda 16
1. An Outdoor Pizza Oven: The Ooni Koda 16
I’ve tested virtually every outdoor pizza oven on the market since they started coming out over a decade ago. Ooni has consistently produced some of the best, most innovative ovens and the Ooni Koda 16 has been my favorite. It has a large, L-shaped fire bar that heats quickly and evenly and minimizes the amount of turning you have to do while the pizza is firing. It has a large, 16-inch stone base for making larger NY-style pizzas, and is big enough to hold a quarter sheet pan or large cast iron skillet if you want to hit your vegetables or steaks with an intense, 900°F+ blast of heat.
Also Excellent:
Andris Lagsden, the inventor of the Baking Steel, changed the way pizza is baked at home by replacing a pizza stone with a slab of solid steel. Its higher thermal capacity and better conduction meant faster baking, poofier crusts, and crisper, better-charred bottoms when baking pizza in a home oven.. In the 15 or so years since he introduced the concept, plenty of competitors have sprang up, but I still recommend supporting the original for its consistent quality throughout the years.
Whether you use an outdoor oven or a baking steel indoors, a wooden pizza peel is essential for launching a raw pizza into the oven. Wood is far more non-stick than metal, which helps ensure that your pizza doesn’t deform as you launch. (Note: it helps ensure, it doesn’t guarantee!). The New Star Foodservice peel is a restaurant-grade peel at restaurant prices (I.E. inexpensive). They come in a variety of sizes, so make sure you pick the right one for your needs.
A wooden peel will get your pizza into the oven, but to maneuver it around and retrieve it, you’ll want a metal turning peel. The one offered by Ooni is a great size for home oven use (professional ones tend to have handles that are too long for small kitchens). It’s solidly constructed out of aluminum and will make turning and retrieving your ‘za a snap.
You can proof dough in bowls or in plastic deli containers, but for the best results, get yourself a set of stackable plastic dough proofing containers which allow you to proof six balls of dough at a time in a shallow container that makes them easy to retrieve for stretching. These are the containers you’ll see in virtually every Neapolitan pizzeria for proofing dough.
Quarter sheet pans are great for proofing and baking pan pizzas, but they’re also useful for transporting toppings to and from the pizza oven, or for roasting meats and vegetables in the pizza oven. Quarter sheet pans truly have a nearly endless list of uses, for pizza and beyond.
Lloyd is the name of the game when it comes to Detroit-style pizza pans. The deep, flared sides make it easy to make a deep Detroi-style pan pizza with the signature dark, crusty, cheesy, caramelized edge. The original and still the best.
A pizza wheel is my default tool when it comes to dividing a round pizza into slices. OXO’s is well-constructed and has a nice, grippy handle. A solid version of a simple but essential tool.
A pizza wheel is my default tool when it comes to dividing a round pizza into slices. OXO’s is well-constructed and has a nice, grippy handle. A solid version of a simple but essential tool.
A digital scale is an essential tool for making dough and ensuring that you get the ratio of flour to water just right. I like using OXO’s 11-pound scale with the pull-out face which allows you to easily see the display even when you’ve got a large bowl sitting on top of it. It’s fast and accurate and stands the test of time.
11. A Bench Scraper
11. A Bench Scraper
A bench scraper is extremely useful for pizza-making. Not only does it help you handle loose, high-hydration doughs, it also makes short work of cleaning up your counter, cutting board, and pizza peel, and it can divide proofed dough for balling. Outside of pizza, it’ll also help you move chopped ingredients around your cutting board, or transfer them from board to pot. I’ve used OXO’s scraper for virtually my entire career. It’s sharp, grippy, and a great size and value.
12. Great Tomatoes
12. Great Tomatoes
The best tomato sauce starts with the best tomatoes. Sometimes it ends with them as well. Bianco di Napoli cans the best tomatoes around with a great balance of sweetness and acidity. Canned tomatoes and a pinch of salt is all you need for the best Neapolitan or New York pizza sauce.
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