How to Scoop a Pizza

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my blog. I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving with your loved ones. This week I will be teaching you guys how to scoop a pizza off of your cutting board! If you haven’t read my blog about how to stretch pizza dough, I would read that before you keep reading.

Scooping a pizza off the cutting board with a paddle is how you get your pizza in the oven. This method is very essential because one its how you put your pizza in the oven, and two you don’t want to get holes when you scoop. Here are the essential steps:

Step 1: make sure there is enough semolina and flour on the board. If there is not, put a line of flour in the front of your pizza. Dust some flour on your paddle so you know the paddle is ready to go. If your paddle is wet of any sort, the pizza won’t slide on effectively and you will create a hole.

Step 2: grab the crust slightly, and slide the paddle underneath the pizza going back and forth a bit with the paddle. Once the pizza is on your paddle gently slide the pizza back and forth to make sure the pizza can move on your paddle. That’s how you will know that your pizza will get into the oven effectively.

Step 3: Find a spot in the back of the oven, and gently slide the pizza off of the paddle into the oven. You want to keep this motion straight so that your pizza won’t be shaped funky. If your pizza is shaped like a football, or a odd shape than a circle, you probably don’t have enough flour and semolina when you’re scooping the pizza.

This is all trial and error, the only way I got better is by practicing and failing! And even now I still make holes and mess up sometimes. But for the most part I’m a pro, only took 11 years… haha. Anyways, I hope you guys learned a lot from this post! Here are some pictures and videos of scooping pizza with the paddle.