wood used in pizza peel

Most of the wooden peels I see at restaurants are made by American Metalcraft. They're using Aspen wood for their peels. I've also seen bamboo peels, but not really in restaurants, more for home use.

I don't think the pores are going to make too much of a difference. You certainly don't want to wash them or get them wet.

Mark,

I agree with Raj.

Make also sure that it is on the lighter side, weight-wise.

Many thanks to both of you. I'll post photos whenever I get around to making it.

Finally finished one. I used Poplar because I could get my hands on some pretty easily that was already 1/2" thick. I didn't feel like thinning thicker stock by hand, and I am not used a lunchbox planer in this heat. Haven't tried it yet, but I think it'll work fine.

Wow. I'm guessing you weren't building this to save $$$. What are the dimensions? It looks like you can make some fairly large pies with that peel.

A little more than 16" wide, and the platform is a little less than 16" long. With handle it is about 32" long.

The reason I built it was because of my oven. Due to the convection fan the long part of the stone/steel has to go with the width of the oven. So I look at the 16" long surface when I open the oven, and it is 14" deep. My old peel didn't really work well for this (too narrow). I've attached a photo of it side by side with the old peel.

Cost wasn't bad (at least for materials). You can grab 1/2" poplar at Lowes for pretty cheap. I think the wood was in the $15-20 range. Now add in time...

Finally got a chance to use the new peel tonight. Worked quite well. I'd only make two changes. I need to make the taper at the end more gradual. Right now it seems a bit too sharp when sliding the pizza onto the steel/stone. The other one is I need to chop 2-3 inches off the handle. On the first one I was thisclose to cracking the handle on the counter opposite of my oven. I think if I made that mistake I'd end up with raw pizza dough and toppings dropping onto the hot oven door, which would be a heck of a mess. I'd rather chop a couple inches off to limit that risk.
The good thing is both of those are easy fixes.

Looks great, Mark!

Are you going to round the corners as well?

No, I want them sharpish. Helpful when sliding on things like Ciabatta.