Pizza Oven Accessories

Pizza oven accessories are meant to enhance your pizza baking experience. In this article, I shall guide you on the pizza oven accessories to turn your foray into an outdoor cooking success. While there may be an endless list of useful pizza accessories, we shall only go through the essential ones.

A good quality pizza spatula

Commonly known as a pizza peel, a pizza spatula is one of the essential pizza oven accessories. When purchasing these accessories, please consider its material, size, and quality.

pizza spatula

For commercial purpose, you need a highly efficient pizza peel. Consider buying a stainless steel one and with a long handle.

Pizza oven brush

If you use a wood pizza oven, then you need a pizza oven brush. This accessory will help clean up ash after the fire has gone out. The recommended oven brush is one with a long handle.

A wire brush is preferred over regular oven brush. This is because it doesn’t burn from hot ash and can be used to distribute heated charcoal.

Pizza wheel

After putting a lot of effort into baking your pizza, you may not want to spoil things in the end. A pizza wheel enables you to cut the pizza without messing with the toppings.

For durability find a stainless steel pizza wheel and with an ergonomic handle.

Tip: when using a pizza wheel always drag the wheel towards you, not pushing it forward.

Heat resistant gloves

While a pizza peel is enough to keep your hands safe when baking, heat resistant gloves are still needed. This pizza oven accessory comes handy when lighting fire. The gloves also make pushing firewood into the oven more comfortable.

When buying gloves go for ones that can handle high temperatures.  The gloves should also fit and extend to cover your wrist.

Pizza oven cover

Pizza oven cover is another primary pizza oven accessories. Once you finish using your outdoor oven, you need to protect it from the rain. If you use a brick oven and fail to cover it, chances are the oven will crack.

Once the water penetrates, it will freeze expanding the crack even more. If you use a metal oven, chances are the oven will rust in the long run. Therefore it's recommended that you cover your oven after use.

To get a good pizza oven cover, you need to be looking out for quality. Heavy duty oven covers are made of a polyester material which does not fade and is entirely waterproof.

Pizza stone

Most home use pizza oven does not have a suitable place to cook a pizza. For crispy pizza, you, therefore, need a pizza stone.

pizza oven accessories

This special stone is preheated before introducing the pizza dough on it. It helps distribute heat across the surface making the pizza crispier.

Laser thermometer

Unlike other thermometers, laser thermometer uses a laser to detect the exact temperature of the oven. By knowing the temperature, you become informed on when to introduce the pizza dough into the oven.

pizza oven accessories

Pizza oven holder basses

To work better with an outdoor pizza oven, you need a work table. Pizza oven tables have adjustable height and wheel for portability. Check the numerous design to see which fits you.

Ash shovel for a wood pizza oven

Once you are done baking your pizza, you are required to remove ash from the burned wood. An ash shovel is one of the pizza oven accessories involved in the cleaning process.

You can choose to use this accessory alongside a pizza oven brush.

Firewood tongs

Firewood tongs are used to grip firewood and help you push them into the pizza oven at a safe distance. This make puts them in the pizza oven accessories for safety and convince.

A more extended set of firewood tongs makes the job easy.

Note: You can choose to buy these items individually or as a set. The second option is more cost effective. For example, you can get a pizza oven accessories set with a laser thermometer, pizza ash shovel, pizza spatula (one for turning and another for placing and retrieving pizza) and pizza oven brush.

We are now hopeful that got a better understanding what pizza oven accessories are, and how to choose them. If you need more information about a particular pizza accessory that we did not mention, don’t hesitate to drop your question below. All the best.

Pizza Tools And Equipment

People love pizza! Having the right pizza tools and equipment is primary if you need consistent good results. Are you thinking of opening a pizza parlor? How about making pizza right in your kitchen? If so then you need to take some time and read this article.

For a home pizzaiolo, the number of pizza tools and equipment needed will depend on your pizza recipe. In our case we shall list all the equipment required, assuming you are making all ingredient from scratch.

Pizza tools and equipment for home baking

To prepare the dough, these are the pizza tools and equipment you need.

Instant thermometer

When preparing your pizza dough, you will need to measure the temperature of the water used to proof yeast. Having the right temperature is crucial in providing yeast with the optimal condition for growth.

Dough mixer

Once you add water, yeast, and flour, you will need a dough mixer. You can choose to use hands to knead the dough if it’s of small quantity.

Other pizza tools and equipment needed regardless of using bought or prepared dough.

Rolling pin

Some people use hands to stretch and flatten the pizza dough. If you value your energy and want a perfect round pizza, then consider using a rolling pin.

Pizza Peel

A pizza peel or pizza spatula is a long-handled pizza tool used to transfer and retrieve pizza in a hot oven. You can also choose to prepare the dough and serve the pizza if the peel is made of either wood or composite.

Pizza cutter

A pizza cutter, like the name suggests, is used to cut pizza. You can choose between pizza wheel, pizza knife or pizza scissors to cut your pizza. Check out our pizza cutter article for more information.

Pizza stone

For a crispy pizza, you need to bake your pizza on a pizza stone. A pizza stone is preheated in an oven before you place pizza dough on it.

Pizza trays

A pizza tray is used to transfer a hot pizza from oven and also serve. Do not use a pizza tray to cook your pizza.

Pizza Oven

A gas or electric oven with a heat capacity of up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit will do the job.

Pizza tools and equipment for pizza parlours 

If you are thinking of opening a pizzeria, then you need pizza tools and equipment that are of commercial standards. Unlike home pizza tools and equipment, these items need to be of more quality and durability.

Pizza Oven

Commercial pizza ovens are large to accommodate many pizzas at once. As you consider the size, it’s essential that you add consideration in regards to the brand of the pizza oven. Some brands have a reputation for manufacturing better pizza ovens.

Pizza cutter

While there are many types of pizza cutters, a pizza Mezzaluna is better suited for a business purpose.

Pizza Peels

The difference between home baking pizza peel and commercial pizza peel is size and length of the handle. Considering the size of the pizza oven, you need a pizza spatula that can reach the far end of the oven and still keep your hands at a safe distance.

Pizza mixer

For all pizza shop owners, a pizza mixer is a primary pizza tool. Unlike for home bakers, mixing a large quantity of dough with hands is tedious.

Refrigerators

If there is excess dough, you need to preserve it for future use. Keeping dough and excess pizza in a fridge guarantees to keep them fresh.

Pizza thermometer

When making a large dough, you need to be even more conscious. Otherwise, you risk compromising the taste of the pizza, which is bad for business. You will use the thermometer to ensure there is an optimal environment for yeast fermentation.

Here are the factors to bethink when buying commercial pizza tools and equipment.

Usage

items such as pizza cutters, pizza peels are heavily used. Consider buying more than one.

The pizza tools and equipment must adhere to safety standards.

The pizza oven, refrigerators, pizza peels should tick with stipulated safety standards. This help to keep your business and customers safe from hazards.

Ease of use: As you buy your pizza equipment ensure they are easy to use. This way, any person with minimal training can handle them.

Check warranty of your pizza tools and equipment.

While some people opt to buy second-hand pizza tools and equipment, new tools are better since they have warrants. If you have equipment with expired warrants, consider insuring them against hazards and theft.

Price

Considering there are other items needed to run a pizza parlor, e.g., furniture, license, wages, you need to remain within your budget.

Do you now feel more confident to venture into pizza baking? Besides this pizza tools and equipment article, check out more of pizza-related articles from us.

 

 

 

 

 

Implementing New Systems For Your Restaurant

I am going to talk a little about implementing a new system. This can be challenging for employees who are very comfortable with the old ways of doing things. Everyone knows that change is necessary but nobody wants that change to happen to them or their position in the restaurant.

So, as a leader, you have to approach this particular decision carefully. You will have to keep a few things in mind while you are creating the changes and then implementing the changes.

1. Recognize the problem.

Recognizing the problem is one of the hardest steps. Especially for somebody who has been doing the same way for a very long time. But once you do see that there is a problem don’t let it continue to go on. We are always busy but leaving a known problem will cause you more work and money in the long-run.

2. Creating the solution to eliminate this problem. 

Anybody can point out a problem. The good ones create a solution to the problem that they recognize. Once you recognize a problem in the system or flow of your restaurant. You should begin working on a solution. This does not mean you must have the solution immediately but you should at least be thinking about the problem and how to fix it.

3. Implementing your solution.

Once you have are ready to implement your solution. Then you have to announce this process in a very direct way to everybody at the same time. You should gather your managers first and discuss how you’re going to implement those solutions. Then depending on the size of the solution. You can either let your managers carry out your orders or you can announce them to the staff yourself. Then you should call a meeting with all the employees that will be affected. This way everybody is told of the changes at the same time.

“The biggest mistake I have made with implementing solutions was trying to tell all the employees individually.”

It is natural for you as a business owner to want to fix a problem by telling that individual employee what they are doing wrong and what to do right. But what this does is trap you into a babysitting job. You have to be there 100% of the time to watch over everybody and everything they are doing. For the owners who love telling people to do things all the time, then maybe that method is working just fine.

For everybody else, when you implement your solution. You should implement them through your management team. This way you are only telling 2 or 3 people and then it is their job to install your solution from the top down. This way if an employee does not use your new system that your managers installed. Your managers can recognize it much faster and are able to handle it immediately. So everybody in the restaurant is on the same page without you having to tell everyone individually.

What I have found is that my business is much more profitable and runs much more smoothly when I am working on my business, not working in my business. So I highly recommend that you allow your managers to manage the minor issues that come up throughout the day. Do not confuse that with you not handling the problems or just letting the manager do everything. Your job is to communicate regularly with your managers. This way your managers and you are on the exact same page.

“Then your management team can more effectively handle those kinds of issues on a daily basis without you being bothered constantly.”

 

You should check out our homepage for more information about everything pizza. 

 

 

 

Metal pizza peel

Metal pizza peel

Whether you have the perfect temperature, right dough, excellent toppings and all those other instruction on how to make a great pizza, you stand to fall short if you do not have the right pizza peel.

There is nothing more frustrating like having trouble sliding the pizza on to the pizza stone, turning it or retrieving it. Try to force the cooking process and you will have not just poor quality pizza but also your hand will be hurting so bad from burns. So amongst the plethora of pizza peel, which type stand out?

Let me take you a step back. There are two major categories of pizza: wooden pizza peels and metal pizza peels. Each of this type has its advantage due to the fact that they are made from different material.

The contrast is seen in the blade and not the handle as it’s typical to find a metal pizza peel with a wooden handle. A wooden handle is preferred due to the material inability to conduct heat fast making it safe for a pizzaiolo to handle.

Type of metal pizza peel

For a myriad of reasons, metal pizza peel is the best amongst the two types. When you visit an online shop or a local store, you will come across two kinds of pizza peel made of metal: aluminum and stainless steel.

Aluminum is by far the commonly used pizza peel. Its strength, ease of cleaning and let not try to ignore, a lower price makes it a favorite. You can get such a pizza peel from as little as $20.

Stainless steel pizza peel is by far the best metal pizza peel. Its advantages go beyond the pretty looks. First, you will not come across someone using a stainless pizza peel complaining of chips, bend or crack. It also saves the hustle of ensuring the peel is completely dry before storage as you don’t have to worry about rust. Not even a scratch can deter the stainless steel peel’s ability not to rust. To be precise, a stainless steel pizza peel is durable, versatile and worry-free.

Why you should choose a metal pizza peel

Both types of metal pizza peel are thin. That thinness makes it easy to slide the peel below the pizza while it is half cooked or when retrieving it from the oven. Storage is also easier with a thin blade. Both metal pizza peels do not absorb food substrate making them easier to clean. That means you do not have to worry about unwanted stains and odor contaminating your hard-cooked best dish. If you prefer, you could get a perforated metal pizza peel. The perforations allow excess dough to fall off before the pizza gets onto the pizza stone.

The only trouble you are assured to came by when using metal pizza peel is the poor launching of the raw dough onto your pizza stone. This is because the dough sticks to the metal surface, a character that has probably kept wooden pizza peel alive. Also, metal pizza peel cost more compared to its counterparts made from wood.

In spite of those limitations, a metal pizza peel comes out as the winner. So, if you are thinking of making a good pizza, you might want to consider using a metal pizza peel. Now that you have found one key tip of making a great pizza, good luck in finding the rest and happy pizza making.

Aluminum pizza peel

As any Italian will tell you, no one should mess with a pizza. To ensure you don’t break that code, let us see how you go about cooking a pizza at home. A good pizza ought to be crisped and well charred? To get such quality, you need to turn your oven to high temperature, place the pizza stone and then the pizza on top before quickly shutting the oven door. Nothing beats a good pizza, but the process of its making sounds quite dangerous if one gets sloppy in the kitchen. A pizza peel will ensure that not only will you have that crispy pizza at the end but it will also it keep your hand safe from the hot oven.

There many types of peels- long-handled tools with a flat paddle pizzaiolo use to put and retrieve pizzas from hot ovens. Most professional cooks prefer long thick peels with heavy duty material to poke their pies from the mouth of fire belching ovens. If you love home cooked pizza and do it occasionally, which is the best pizza peel for the job? Well, I advise on an aluminum pizza peel. It never disappoints.

Aluminum pizza peel shapes

In addition to different sizes, aluminum pizza peels are available in various shapes. This is seen on the peel end. The aluminum material can either be round-headed or square-headed. Each of this shape has its advantage. A rounded head enables one to work with pizzas in all corners of an oven using a single small doorway. Try to maneuver the pies using a square-headed aluminum pizza peel, and you will get a different experience. However, this mostly applies to professionals. For a home cook working on a grill or small oven, there is no need to attack the pizza head on. Therefore, a square-headed aluminum peel makes the process of inserting and retrieving much easier. You will also notice that either a square or a rectangularly shaped aluminum peel prevent the uncooked pizza from sagging over the edges.

Aluminum pizza peel Size

Regarding size, the aluminum pizza paddle varies in length of the handle or the head of the blade. The head of the blade might be long, (4-5 inches) allowing the cook to reach all the way to the back of the oven while keeping your hand from the door. That means you don’t have to worry about baking your hand despite the short handle. Alternatively, you can choose to use an aluminum pizza peel with a short-headed blade and a long handle. The length of the handle is designed to keep your hand from coming into contact with the pizza stone, hence safe.

Why choose Aluminum pizza peel

Price for the Aluminum pizza peel

A 310 by 310 blade with a 550mm handle goes for $39.95. For 350 by 350 mm blade with a 600mm handle, you have to part with $5 extra. Note that you can even get it a more affordable price if you mind window shopping at the local store.

Ease of cleaning of the Aluminum pizza peel

Aluminum is the second easiest metal to clean. The first is stainless steel. That saves you both time, energy and of course soap. The peel ease in cleaning translate to fewer chances of contamination from unwashed food debris.

Long lasting and thin.

Aluminum is a metal and thus goes without a saying that it will serve you for a very long time. Besides that, aluminum pizza peel is super thin making it easy to slip under the pie whether you are cooking on a grill or a pizza stone.

Other benefits of the Aluminum pizza peel

An aluminum pizza peel is made with wooden handle. That makes it safe to handle while the good conductor of heat blade is in contact with the pie.

While purchasing the aluminum pizza peel go for a size that is convenient for storage. For the long handled peels, a nail on the wall works perfectly. For the long-headed blade pizza peel, you can try improvising e.g. squeezing it between your fridge and its housing.

Don’t forget about all of your other pizza tools like your cutters and long-handled forks.

Making Pizza

Starting from the grains and forming Pizza

Pizza even the name makes the mouth water. It has recently become one of the most loved foods by people of all ages especially the kids. It cannot be defined in words as it is the comfort food for some people and a celebration for others. People in every country die for it.

It begins from the Italian restaurants, spread across the world, and become the most popular food of the age. Since the beginning of the production pizza, it meets many new evolutions that transformed it into what we eat today.

Now in every pizza shop, you can find several new and unique flavors of pizza even in different shapes. Nevertheless, the best pizzas are the Italian pizza that can be ordered in any of the famous pizza restaurants. Therefore, you must be wondering that how this amazing food product is created, here is a minor guideline.

How to make pizza:

Preparing a pizza is a straightforward and simple task, with few principles managing a delicious food item. The mixture of dough is made just with flour, normal yeast or brewer’s yeast, salt, and water. Either hand or blender then massages batter, and the mixture is punched down and then any desired shape is given with hands.

Mostly the pizza is served as a round pie. In addition, there are twofold crusted or stuffed, pizzas loaded with a wide range of meats, fish, vegetables, and cheeses. They are regarded as flat pizza but we can say that every region has their special tradition of making pizza. Thus, in different regions, it is found in different shapes and sizes.

Now coming towards the toppings the most famous among them are meat sausages, ricotta cheddar cheese, peppers, mushrooms, and meatballs that might differ from area to area and city to city, the dough remains very comparable.

Equipment to prepare perfect pizza:

Pizza Oven:

It can utilize wood, coal, gas or electricity as fuel. It must have the temperature range of up to 700F to bake the pizza properly.

Pizza pans:

You can have the pans in round shape as that is the standard shape for making pizza. According to your choice, you can also have them in other shapes as well.

Pizza paddle:

It is mostly a wooden tool that is used to place the pizza in the hot oven and remove it once it is properly backed. Now you are familiar that how to make pizza and what are the equipment you will require to make a perfect pizza. You must also learn the benefits you might have from consuming pizza.

Pros of consuming pizza:

Calcium:

A pizza is a decent way to have calcium intake for the day. Cheddar cheese is one of the better sources of calcium however by all account, not the only source of pizza since tomato sauce likewise contains calcium. One slice of a 14-inch cheddar cheese pizza contains around 219 milligrams of calcium or 22 percent of your daily intake.

Proteins:

Eating pizza will also help you to gain the protein you require for building muscle and different tissues in your body. While cheddar cheese is a decent source of protein, picking a pizza with meat will help your pizza’s protein content. Chicken and fish are healthy protein pizza toppings. A slice of a 10-inch pizza topped with turkey pepperoni and mushrooms contains 11 grams of protein.

Vegetables:

You ought to eat 2 to 3 bowls of vegetables every day, and having a pizza topped with vegetables is the best way to add up to your vegetable intake. You can add your most loved vegetables to a frozen cheddar cheese pizza for a quick dinner.

You must top your pizza with broccoli, onions, bell pepper, mushrooms or whatever another vegetable you like. Make sure to eat a blend of various color vegetables for the best medical advantages.

Whole Grains:

On the off chance that you eat a pizza with a whole grain dough, it will likewise help you meet your required amount of fiber intake of minimum three servings of whole grains every day.

This means you will get more fiber for the day, since entire wheat crust has at any rate twice as much fiber as the normal crust, with every slice of a 10-inch pizza containing 4 grams of fiber versus the 1.5 grams in a slice of a normal crust pizza. This fiber can bring down your chances of health issues.

Cons of consuming pizza:

It might make you prone to heart diseases. The saturated fats present in the pizza can lead to myocardial infarction by blocking your arteries. It is full of calories that will cause you to gain weight leading to obesity. It might increase your blood glucose level because of the unhealthy carbohydrates present in them. It might raise your blood pressure because of the salt content.
All these effects will occur by over-consumption of pizza, as we know that access to everything is bad.

You might be always confused that where to find the best pizza near me. In my opinion, I have tried and tasted the pizza of many pizza restaurants but the best flavor, texture, and crust of pizza I enjoyed was by the paisanosPnP that is not only famous for their pizza deals. They also offer a verity of other delicious dishes as well.

You will find the best toppings and seasonings, compositions of pizza that will make you love and visit them repeatedly. They also offer special pizza coupons that will allow you to have perfect pizza at rates that are more reasonable. So grab your wallets now and have the best pizza at paisanosPnP.com. 

Delivery with Uber Eats

Adding Uber Eats to our restaurant

For years, we never delivered our pizzas to the local’s neighborhood like other pizza restaurants. I did not want to deal with all of the insurances and liabilities that come with delivering. We were so busy with our walk-in and site down customers I just did not want the hassle. After all, our customers were so used to either dining in or taking-out.

But our societies eating habits are changing and they’re changing fast. Not only has the average time a family eats out per week tripled. But the average time a family orders delivery per week has now doubled. Some say it is not only because families habits are changing. I believe a few of the major factors in this increase of home delivery of dinner is because.

1. Whether they offer in-house delivery or outsource delivery. Every restaurant seems to offer delivery. Especially with all of the companies that specialize in delivery like Uber Eats and Bite Squad.

2. The American families dinner habits have changed.

After a while, I began to realize that if we do not offer delivery we were going to start losing customers. We would lose those customers to other local restaurants that utilize these external companies that specialize in delivering. They have created a market to where the customer can get online and order from any restaurant and have it delivered (even McDonalds). Even if they wanted to order from our restaurant, they would still order from the store that delivers.

A general rule of thumb is that when a customer orders from a restaurant. They tend to order from that same restaurant up to 3 times in a row without coming back to your restaurant. So if you don’t deliver, you not only lost that sale. You also lost that customers next 2-3 sales.

So, I finally gave in and decided that I had to offer delivery to stay current. But after doing some research and crunching some numbers. It did not take long for me to realize that it was going to be very costly for me to deliver pizza to my customers. The costs just seemed to go on and on. There is the extra payroll, Insurance for the delivery vehicle, the extra in general liability, the hassle of hiring and firing a bunch of new employees and on and on…..

That’s when I decided that I had to find a better and more cost-effective way to execute this move. That’s when I started to look into 3rd party delivery services like Uber Eats, and Bite Squad. Let me tell you, there are a lot of them.

On the service, they are pretty similar to each other. They all take an average of 30% of the top. That was the biggest mental hurdle for me to get over. As a restauranteur, you typically only making an average of 10% profit. Now they are asking me to give them 30% of the entire order? That was a hard fact to swallow. That just hurt me to the bones. Knowing that I had to offer delivery but my only choices were not good.

Then I started to go back to my previous notes for delivering in-house. I quickly realized that after looking at all of the costs and hassle attached to in-house delivery. That the 30% was actually starting to make sense. Between the labor and insurance, I was already over 30% of the entire check going to just those 2 things. Then add on top of that all the hassle I would have to deal with. It started to add up real fast. Outsourcing delivery was the way to go.

Now, it was about finding the best delivery provider for my restaurant and our needs. So, I started to look into UberEats and all of the options that they offer.

Uber eats delivery actually offered a lot of other services, besides delivery.

When I went back and really looked at what they where gonna bring to the table beside delivery. I was pretty impressed and decided to look a little deeper. What I found was that they offered my restaurant a great opportunity for branding and marketing that was unavailable to a restaurant like mine before.

  • Uber eats sent a professional photographer to my restaurant to take photos of every item on my menu.

They did this so they could add photos of every meal we make to the Uber eats delivery online menu. I was also able to keep a copy of the photos for me to use is my own marketing. This would have cost me $500 if I paid for it myself.

  • They reached a market that I was not able to target without spending large amounts of money.

I did not advertise at all that we were starting delivery in any way. But we did over $4,000.00 our first full week delivering with Uber eats. This means that I was not going to get those sales in the first place. The people who ordered Uber eats delivery that day where on the Uber eats website to get delivery and see our menu. They were not going out to eat and where not coming to our restaurant, These families were getting delivery no matter who was available for Uber eats that week. I have come to realize just how large and diverse the customer base Uber eats caters to is.

  • They handle all of the customer services for their orders themselves.

I was amazed to learn that Uber eats handles all of the customer issues that might arise throughout the entire process. Even if it is our fault in every way, Uber eats delivery will take care of it and make it right with the customer. Keep in mind if you constantly screw it up and become a liability, I’m sure Uber eats delivery will decide to not serve your restaurant.

  • They pay for 100% of the order even if they refund the customer.

Yep, you read correctly. Even if Uber eats delivery has to refund the customer all of their money for any reason. They still pay our restaurant the full amount. This is very nice because the customer stays happy and Uber eats took care of the issues from start to finish. I wish everything in this business worked like that!

So after taking a second look and considering all of my options. Even though Uber eats takes 32% off the top. With all of the other things they offer, I have decided to give Uber eats delivery a try.  Check back for an update on how my partnership with Uber eats delivery goes.