Aluminum peels are easier to slide under a pizza than wooden ones.
Not to be confused with ingredients, pizza supplies are the tools you'll need to make a pizza the way the pros do it. Heat sinks and dough dockers help the pizza cook more quickly; pizza pans help you build deep-dish delights; cutters help you carve the perfect slice; and peels help you move that fresh oven-baked pizza from the heat to your seat.
Heat Sinks and Dough Dockers
These two tools serve as your first line of defense from hungry mouths screaming "Is dinner ready yet?" The heat sink is made of cast aluminum, has a multitude of thin, downward spikes, is left in the oven where it gathers heat and is placed on the top of the pizza--usually deep dish pizzas--while the pizza cooks. The super heated spikes cook the center sections of the pizza while the oven takes care of the rest, speeding things up. For thin pizzas, a dough docker--the tool you see the pros rolling over fresh dough--places small holes in the dough to allow heat to permeate the pizza more quickly. The roller is also a great tool for small ovens that cannot accommodate a heat sink.
Pizza Pans
Thin, New York style pizzas use a standard thin aluminum pan we've all seen before. For Chicago-style deep dish pizzas, a metal pan with vertical sides, much like a french skillet without the handle, is used. If you want to get authentic but don't have an open stone oven, round pizza stones are a good alternative to metal pans.
Cutters
Cutters come in either a rocker or rolling style. Rockers have a handle on both ends and a fixed, rounded blade that allow you to rock the blade back and forth, cutting the pizza. Equally as effective is the roller, which uses a circular, rotating blade in place of the fixed blade to carve your pizza into slices.
Peels
Whether you cook with a pan or right on the stone of an open oven, the pizza is going to be piping hot when it's finished cooking. To remove the pizza, you'll need a peel. Peels are made of wood or aluminum and are designed to reach into deep ovens to scoop up a pizza and remove it from the oven. Wood peels are authentic, but may require more skill to slide under a soft pizza than their sharp aluminum counterparts.
