Culina 16"x 18" Pizza Peel, Forged Aluminum, Wooden Handle

This peel is large enough for the size of pizza we make-15" round. There is a learning curve for this. So I practiced placing the formed dough on it after sprinkling corn meal on it, by shimmying & shoving, I got it right after a while. You need to use corn meal liberally for it to slide freely. The corn meal does not stick to the pizza much, so no worries.I roll the dough right on the peel and apply the toppings and shove the pizza on the hot steel. Works great. It is big and does not fit in any cupboard in the kitchen. I made a hole in the handle tied a string and hung it out of sight on the side of the fridge. I feel it is a must for making decent pizza.

Overall this is a fantastic pizza peel. The large 14x16 inch peel will accommodate a larger pizza for a larger stone than the more common 12 inch peel will do. There is a lot of debate on whether a thicker wooden peel or a narrow metal peel is better. The primary benefit is that wooden peels do not stick as easily to raw dough making it easy to apply a pizza to the stone. However the metal peels tend to be easier to pick up a pizza due to the thinner edge from a peel. With enough corn meal generously applied to the peel before use on raw dough (which essential act as ball bearings on your peel) I find that the metal peel is superior due to the thinner edge which makes it easier to slide under a cooked pizza. With this peel it did take a bit more effort to put the uncooked pizza on the stone, but it's much easier to fiddle with a raw dough outside of the oven than inside. Once you work the dough onto this peel it slides off very easy to place a pizza or bread loaf on a heated baking stone.Pro-tip: After putting corn meal on the peel, put the pizza dough without any topping on the peel. Shake it around to see if it slides easily. If it slides easily then start putting sauce and toppings on the pizza while the dough is on the peel.At this price point I find the pizza peel to be great value given the size and quality of construction. The aluminum is obviously not as nice as steel, but at the price point this is great value. The only reason I am giving it 4 out of 5 stars comes down to the construction of the handle. The handle is unfinished wood which is easy to grip. My only gripe is that it is slightly loose which makes me curious as to how it holds up. The wood is basically secured by dented grooves in the metal which grip onto the handle. If you hold an empty peel in one and twist it back and forth like you would a foosball table rod you will notice that the peel will shift just a little bit on the handle. That said, when actually picking the pizza off the stone I have never noticed any awkward tilting or rotation. Ideally you would not see any shifting on the handle however. Also, for a tool of this size, it would be nice if there was a hole in the handle to run some twine or string for hanging. I do not have a large enough cupboard to store a 14x16 in peel with a handle sticking off it. If there was room for a string for hanging this would be perfect.For a $30 peel you probably won't find much better than this. Just make sure to apply corn meal to the peel before use and retrieving and placing a pizza on your stone will be as easy as pie. You may even be able to avoid the problem of sliding raw dough onto the peel by constructing your pizza on top of the stone to begin with.

Pizza dough sticks even though I use much flour or cornmeal to prevent sticking.

Very LARGE...actually too big. Hard to store.

This is a great, lightweight pizza peel. I bought it after I purchased a baking steel and had already burned myself to a crisp a couple of times. It has a nice thin edge so it's easy to shake the pizza off into the oven and just as easy to take it out when it's done. All in all, a good value and small enough to be able to keep in my kitchen cabinet.

Great quality product. One downside was the lack of a picture that gave size comparison. This turned out to be larger than I anticipated, and while it's great at moving pizza around its hard to find a place for it in the kitchen. Might also be better if there were a way to hang it up on the wall or something... Overall, not bad.

It seems that I spend far too much time researching products before I purchase them, and since I had spent several days tracking down the very best baking stone (according to baking experts, that is), I decided that I needed high quality gear to go along with my baking stone...So, once again I started reading...And as far as I can tell, there really is absolutely no reason to spend &45.00 or more on a pizza peel. They all do the same thing. They slide the food into the oven, and they help to to retrieve it again, once it has been baked to perfection.There are no peels that have little fingers attached to help you to grab the pizza before it gets pushed off the back of the baking stone while you try to remove it from the oven, and that, as far as I am concerned, id the only feature that a peel could have to make it cost as much as your baking stone.I was surprised at how big this thing is. At 28 inches from end to end, you will need to find a special place to store it, otherwise, this Culina 14 16 Pizza Peel is perfect. It does what it is designed to do, and, well, it costs so much less than the others out there, that I had money left over to splurge on my pizza toppings.

While this is a great functioning product, please note how big it is - the 26" length was too long for our 24" deep cabinets, even with the wood handle pointing up or down. Also note the picture makes it look as if the product is flat, but the handle is at an approximate 20 degree upward angle to the flat aluminum working surface, so it winds up being 3-3/8" tall. Please take that into account when considering where you are going to store this peel. For my smallish kitchen I had to go with a wood peel that had a smaller handle length.