Rockin' Out With Pizza

Let me introduce you to something in many pizza makers’ kitchen tool box: a pizza peel. This is an essential pizza tool.



A Pizza Peel and Pizza Stone

A pizza peel is used to move pizza in and out of wood or coal fired oven. The peels used in Pepe’s Pizza in New Haven, have a handle that is 8-10 feet long. The peel can be used to move a pizza on and off a pizza stone as well.

It is a handy tool. The peel can be made of wood, metal or even bamboo. (My friend Espo made a peel out of a card board box once, until it caught on fire…but that’s another story..)

Over the years of my pizza making adventures, I used many different pizza peels. I have a collection of 4 of them. I’ve used them, I’m familiar with them. I like them.

Enter Ron, a longtime friend of Pizza Therapy. He sent me pictures of the most amazing pizza peel I have ever seen. He made it himself out of wood in the shape of a Fender Stratocaster Guitar.
 
Ron wrote: I too am somewhat of a pizza fanatic. I use an 18" Weber kettle grill with a 16" Old Stone Oven stone and fire it with a 185,000 BTU Cajun cooker. I also made a pizza peel fashioned to look like a Fender Stratocaster guitar.

(Albert's Side Bar: Musicians who have played a Fender Stratocaster include: Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Mark Knopfler, Dick Dale, Prince...)


                                                         
Eric Clapton with Stratocaster



Now I have seen some unusual pizza devices,  but a peel in the shape of a Fender Stratocaster guitar?
I was speechless!

Here is what an actual Stratocaster looks like:


 
I immediately had to see it!
This pizza peel makes you want to Rock and Roll!

Pictures of the Stratocaster Pizza Peel:

                                                                  

As soon as I saw The Stratocaster Pizza Peel,
I knew I had some questions for Ron.

Albert: Are you a wood worker?

Ron: I used to work construction and woodworking has always been one
my fields of expertise. I simply do woodworking as a hobby now as
my job isa civilian field representative in an electronics shop for the
Air Force.

Albert: How did you come up with this idea?

Ron: One day I was passing through my neighborhood and one of the
neighbors was having a yard sale so I stopped in to take a look. He had a
Fender amplifier for sale so I bought it and replaced the jacks to
make it serviceable. I then built a guitar and figured that would make
a really neat pizza peel. I made the patterns and then made a few
proto types before I came up with the finished product. It's very close to
the size of an actual Strat.

Albert: How much did it cost to make? How long did it take?

Ron: I would guess that it only cost about $25 to make but there was
a lot of sanding and I also inlayed the frets and scale markings.
 The toughest part was sanding the main body down to less than 1/4". I just
used a belt sander for that job. The whole process could be automated
and be performed quite efficiently.

It was fun making something that no one else has. I don't really know how long it took me to build. I would just work on it for an hour or two at a time when I felt like it. I don't have any plans to make them commercially as that would take all the fun out of it. It's like making pizza, if you start doing it as a
job instead of a hobby it somehow looses it's allure.

Albert: What do your guests say when you cook a pizza with the Strat?
 
Ron: Everyone loves the pizza Strat. I moved to Germany last October and when the movers unpacked my household goods they saw theSrat and asked me if I could make one for him as he worked as a pizza man at the local pizzeria.

 I think everyone likes it because it's so unique and who doesn't want to secretly be a rock star?

Albert: Are you a musician?
 
Ron: I'm not a musician and can't play the guitar to save my life. I
did make another pizza guitar in the shape of a Gibson SG. It was the
original pizza guitar prototype. It's not as neat as the Strat. I made
the neck out of maple and glued that onto a pine body. ...

Albert: Thanks Ron on behalf of pizza makers everywhere. You certainly have taken the pizza peel to new levels.
 

Side view: