Perforated pizza peel – is it worth it?
The holes let excess flour fall through before the pizza goes in, meaning fewer burnt flour specks in a hot oven. Where it helps, and where it doesn't.
Quick answer: Yes, if you bake in a wood-fired oven or another very hot oven. The holes let excess flour and semola fall through before the pizza goes in, which means fewer burnt flour grains on the oven floor. The downside is that a perforated peel is worse for building and topping the pizza on, since the dough presses more easily down into the holes.
What the holes actually do
When you dust flour or semola on the peel so the pizza doesn’t stick, some of it comes along when the pizza is launched into the oven. In a wood-fired oven running at 400–500 °C (750–930 °F), loose flour burns almost instantly and settles as a black, bitter layer on the oven floor — which then sticks to the base of the next pizza. A perforated peel lets most of the excess flour fall through before the pizza even reaches the oven opening.
Where it falls short
The holes make the peel less suited to building and topping a pizza on. A soft, unbaked dough base is easily pressed down into the openings if you work on it for long on the peel, which can leave marks in the base or even small holes. Perforated peels therefore work best as a launching tool — the dough should sit on it for a short moment, not through the whole topping process.
When it’s worth the trade-off
In a home oven at 250 °C (480 °F) it matters less: the bake time is long enough that a few flour grains on the floor don’t get charred black in the same way, so the benefit of the holes is smaller. In a wood-fired oven, gas oven or any other oven above 400 °C (750 °F), the benefit is considerably clearer, especially if you bake several pizzas in a row and flour residue would otherwise build up on the floor between rounds.
How to use it without losing wood’s advantage
Build and top the pizza on an ordinary wood or metal peel, and switch to the perforated peel just for the launch itself — see wood or aluminium for that trade-off. Exactly how much flour different peel types actually carry into the oven is something we want to measure in an upcoming test. Read more about the flour amount itself in flour on the peel.
Read more about launching, which makes the launch itself safer, and about the wood-fired pizza oven where the burnt-flour problem is at its worst. Also see pizza sticks to the peel if the dough is already stuck.
