How can I get my pizza dough onto a hot pizza stone?

[KIN]

What I'm doing isn't working! I don't have any kind of plastic thing to roll it on. Any suggestions?

[Tammy]

then I just 'peel' it off onto the stone.

Tammy

[*anj*]

I think that you need a peel to do that.
If I make individual sized pizzas I can put them on the back of a cookie sheet and slide them over, but I haven't been successful doing that with a full sized one.

[KIN]

Do you think wax paper would work? I don't have any parchment paper right now...

[WTMindy]

and I make the pizza right on it. I sprinkle a little corn meal on the board before I place the dough on it then build the pizza on the board. It slides right off onto the hot pizza stone. It looks like this. http://www.amazon.com/Sassafras-1416-Pizza-Peel/dp/B00004S1D6/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1201897366&sr=8-1

[PariSarah]

I've done it a few different ways. In order, from most likely to be successful to most likely to use up my profanity quotient for the month:

* Roll it out onto parchment paper on the counter, sauce and top it, and slide the whole thing (paper and all) onto the stone in the oven. Any paper not covered by dough will burn a bit, so you might trim the excess. You can reuse it once or twice if you don't have too many burned up bits.

* Use liberal amounts of olive oil and roll/press it out. Let it rest for about ten minutes. Take the stone out of the oven, transfer the dough from the counter onto the stone, quickly and lightly pressing it to shape if you need to. Sauce and top super-quickly, and get it back into the oven as quickly as you can.

* Roll it out, transfer to an inverted cookie sheet (or a lipless one) liberally covered in cornmeal, sauce and top quickly, and then slide it onto the stone in the oven. It will stick in little places if you don't get it onto the stone quickly. And it causes lots and lots of smoke from the cornmeal falling into the bottom of the oven.

If I'm making lots (three or more), I use the first method. Unless I don't have parchment paper, in which case I use the last method, dirtying lots of cookie sheets and generally annoying my dh.

You can also assemble the pizza on the inverted cookie sheet without the cornmeal (maybe with a slick of oil?) and bake it for two minutes, just to firm up the bottom. THEN slide it onto the stone. I haven't tried this in awhile, though, and I can't remember the success quotient.

[PariSarah]

I don't think you're supposed to bake with wax paper, but I may be wrong . . .

[KIN]

:) I guess I was thinking of rolling/spreading it out onto wax paper, turning it over onto the stone and peeling the wax paper off. Would it work?????

[PariSarah]

Duh!! I was thinking of my method, where you bake it with the paper.

Please disregard my comment!

[Dana in OR]

It was more costly than a regular pizza peel but I use it every day. It is a pastry cloth covered peel that works sort of like a conveyor belt to transfer dough to the hot stone. It took a bit of getting used to but it works very well.

http://www.superpeel.com/

Dana

[Jennifer in MI]

Am I doing something wrong? I usually just roll out my dough right on to the stone. Is the stone supposed to be hot when you put the dough on it? It always turns out okay!!

[Blossom'sGirl]

I heat up my stones in the oven (like 500 deg). I make the pizza on thin pans with the holes all over them. I put these on the stones. Sometimes, I pull the stones out with the pizza after the top starts to brown. I put them both on a cooling rack and the hot stone helps get the crust good and crispy.

[Philothea]

As someone who had homemade pizza every Thursday for over 5 years, the cornmeal method is definately the best for getting it onto a hot stone.