Home-made pizza

[ParsleyTheLioness]

This might be me being dopey it often is but when you make pizza, and need to get it on the pre-heated breadstone, how do you get the pizza onto the stone without the pizza coming to pieces? Please don't say stop using the breadstone.... I have recently bought it at great expense.TIA.

Heat the stone then put the base on there without the toppings, then top it while it's on the very expensive pizza stone. Pizza dough should be quite easy to move around - people in Italian restaurants throw it up in the air after all!

Thanks! Feel its become personal now, me and the stone...

Don't let the stone beat you. I also sometimes spray a squirt of that Frylight stuff on mine while it's heating up to make it extra non-stick.

Had the exact same dilema. Bought a cake 'paddle' thingy from Lakeland. I sprinkle that with a bit of semolina to stop the dough sticking, make up the pizza then kind of slide/jerk the pizza off it onto the hot stone. Tricky but comes with practice.

Used a "Peel" (what the paddle thing is properly called) to slide the pizza on to the stone, using semolina to stop it sticking; all was fine. Used it to try and get it out of the oven, only to wind up pushing the pizza off the back of the shelf where it dropped down on to and in to the gas burner, all goey cheese etc. Took quite a bit of cleaning when the oven was cold!

If you don't want to invest in a paddle, you can use a baking tray with no lip to the same effect. Or if all your baking sheets have a lip, turn one upside down. Can be tricky (and potentially messy) but once you get the hang of it, works really well.

I think I'm a bit clumsy...have got one of those things you get pizza out of the oven with, new, but cheap from a car boot..has a handle, but not a long one. Tried putting polenta on it, followed by the pizza and jerking it off onto the stone (arf) but either my wrist movement isn't right, or the pizza is too big and heavy to work...

I make the pizza on baking parchment and then lift the whole lot onto the preheated pizza stone. The baking parchment doesn't affect the performance of the pizza stone.

That's an idea Jubilation. Thanks all.