Making a wooden bread peel – pizza paddle

To celebrate finishing the chimney and almost all the rendering we fired up the oven.

Picture 1. The finished chimney – And also the render on the whole wall is done and it is drying up nicely.

Picture 2. Blackwood slab for making pizza/bread paddle – At the same time I decided to make a wooden peel for loading the pizzas. We already have a metal one for unloading but I thought a wooden one would be fun to make.

Picture 3. Milling marks, making pizza/bread peel – To make the paddle I had a slab of blackwood (Acacia) which I had cut at our farm back in the 1980s. I traced the shape of the metal peel and partially cut it out with a jigsaw and circular saw for the straight bits. Then with an electric plane and a sander I finished the surfaces before cutting the integral handle. Then I used a router with a bull-nose bit to smooth the edges of the handle but kept the milled marks made by the chainsaw when it was originally slabbed. Sorry I got too busy to take more pics of the finished product, but the final process of making the peel was to rub olive oil into the wood. It took slightly over an hour to make this wooden paddle.

Picture 4. Ready for business – Carbon burn-off full heat up. I started the fire at the front then moved it to the back and then across ready for pizza cooking. The ash was raked across and I swept and gave a quick wash to the bricks.

Picture 5. The first of three pizzas – This pizza was almost perfect. I think we’re getting the hang of the whole thing. We made the dough the night before and kept it in the fridge until about three hours before we used it. You could hold a slice by the edge with no sagging. We’ve also learned to lift the pizza close to the roof for a few seconds to perfect-finish off the topping before unloading the pizzas.

Picture 6. Chook in the firey furnace – It was probably still a little hot for the chicken but we roasted it vertically but close to the door. We still had to add aluminium foil to stop it from burning.

Picture 7. Cooked chook – But it was however amazingly moist and full of flavor.