EXO "BIG 16" - 16" Super Peel Non-Stick Pizza Peel

Saw this on the America's Test Kitchen TV show and it works exactly as described. Very easy to use - washed it when it first arrived, and it makes transferring the pizza very easy! The pizza keeps its shape, and I can top a pizza and get it right on the cast iron pizza pan. I highly recommend this if you enjoy making pizzas at home and cook them on a cast iron pan. There is no other way I can do this gracefully without this item.Tip: I put flour on the pizza peel cloth, and make the pizza right on the cloth. This way I can just do a single transfer right from the pizza peel to the pizza pan, so it saves me from having to transfer from my countertop to the peel, and then to the pizza peel.

I'm an experienced pizza maker. I make my own dough from scratch and have recently enjoyed making naturally leavened dough using my own starter and following the methods described by Ken Forkish in "The Elements of Pizza." This dough is wet, but turns out delicious crusts. I bought a super peel because I was tired of my dough sticking to my wooden peel. Now, my dough sticks to the cloth on the super peel instead. I went through several practice pies with identical results. While it was fun eating the calzones that I salvaged from the pie failures, it wasn't worth the time or money. There is nothing special about the super peel. It's expensive for a 16" aluminum peel, and the cloth is a cheap poly/linen blend. The cloth gets clogged with dough and stained with tomato sauce, so it's another thing to clean that doesn't add any benefit in the first place. I'm keeping the peel, ditching the cloth, and investigating other flour dusting blends to try to solve the sticky dough problem.

While using it as a peel it works quite well, strong handel and good quality design. While using the belt system however it can fall a bit short. When using it on a larger pizza, the belt is hard to move and catches on the front lip. This is most likely because the metal lip is much thinner than in the wood designs. If the handel was longer it would be better.

Takes some practice and the cloth is polyester/cotton blend, so i'm afraid I might melt it. but it has worked great for getting 3 baguettes into the oven all at the same time, and pizza goes in without scrunching up. I still use a no-moving-parts peel for removal, since i don't want to melt the fabric. I use a baking steel at 500 F.

I got this today and tried to cook a pizza tonight. I practiced using it before going live. It was able to pick the pizza up, but when I laid it on the stone it was so large I couldn't get the pizza all the way back so that it covered the stone. I couldn't even see the stone. When I pulled it back the front of the pizza flopped off the stone and into my oven, creating a huge mess. There was no way to get under the pizza and when I tried the conveyor belt fell apart in my hands making it completely useless with respect to salvaging my pizza. I was so mad I pitched it in the trash. Never again.

The perfect size for my 16" pizza stone. I read other reviews about the cloth shrinking. I washed on cold and line dried - no shrinkage, no wrinkling. The included pamphlet says shrinkage up to 1.25" is normal. They recommend cold to lukewarm water and line drying; if choosing to tumble dry, use low and remove while still damp to finish drying as over-drying will cause wrinkling and additional shrinking which might require ironing (possibly the worst chore ever, in my book). Even if it shrunk a full inch or so, it wouldn't impact usage in my kitchen since I make appx. 14" pizzas.I was able to make the pizzas on the counter and load them onto the "belt" without any problem. I use my old wood peel for removal so I can cut directly on the peel and slide on a plate. If you have a large enough cutting board, you could use this peel to remove the finished pizza to the board and load up a "raw" pizza very quickly. With my old system I was having to remove the first pizza from the oven and then start creating the second one directly on the wooden peel. This peel really saves me a bunch of time since I can put down crust on the counter for my kids or guests, allow them to create their own pizzas, and then pick up their creations from the counter and load into the oven as soon as I remove the previous pizza.There were some tips in the instruction pamphlet that helped me to understand the peel better, even though I had watched several videos prior to purchase.1. When you wrap the canvas around, there should be about 1" of slack/drop when you look at the underside of the peel. I suspect people who have had trouble getting the belt to slide easily have had it wrapped too tightly.2. I thought you were supposed to push/pull the clamp up and down to operate the belt, but it is really your hand holding the peel handle that moves back and forth. As a righty, my right elbow is what moves forward and back; my left hand/ stays in one place just holding onto the clamp. If you try to move the clamp instead, it doesn't slide as smoothly.I will need to get used to not using so much flour/cornmeal on the counter around the crust. The cloth picks up the excess flour on the open space around the pizza which caused a dusting inside the oven making for a smoky flour cloud as I slid it in the oven. I'm used to needing the crust to move around freely on the wooden peel in order to slide it off. That isn't necessary with this system, so that will just take a bit of personal experience to get that right.I'm a big baker and have never perfected picking up pie crusts around a rolling pin, so I'm looking forward to giving that a go with this peel. I also like the idea of using waxed paper in lieu of the canvas to pick up gooey items like cake layers. I think this will be a pretty versatile tool that will get a good amount of use in my kitchen beyond our weekly pizza night.

This works like a charm! A small learning curve, so practice on a folded over towel or something like that, then off you go. No more building pizzas directly on your peel, and hurrying so that it doesn't begin to stick. With this peel, you build your pizza on your counter-top or cutting board, etc., the simply use the Super Peel to pick it right up off the counter and place it in the oven.I've used the earlier version for a couple years now, and am very happy that they came out with this new, wider version. The only complaint I had with the early version was that it was a tiny bit small, and if your 12" pizza became slightly stretched to say, 13", then it would sag off the peel. This one has solved that problem! And if you desire, you can remove the cloth on this one and use it as a metal peel.