We took a sourdough class a little while ago and learned how to make sourdough pizza crust, and let me tell you: it’s ridiculously good. The first pizzas we made were the best we’ve ever pulled out of our oven. Crisp on the bottom, a little chew, that pleasant tang from a well-fed starter… We were feeling it.
The guy teaching the class used pizza screens to move his pizzas from board to oven. It was smooth, simple, zero drama. Dean thought it might be smart to get one.
“But look how good I am at transferring with the peel!” I said. “We don’t need a pizza screen.”
You would think, dear reader, that I would have learned by now.
Every time – and I mean EVERY. TIME. I boast, the universe steps in with a smack to the face designed especially for me.
Tonight’s was particularly elegant.
I prepped the pizza. It was gorgeous. I floured the peel. I gave it that confident little shimmy to make sure nothing stuck. I slid it toward the oven with the smugness of a woman who believes in her skills.
And the pizza…
did not move.
Except for the part that did move, which slid sideways, drooped off the peel edges, folded in half, and attempted to dive directly onto the oven door like a cheese-covered lemming.
What emerged from the oven was not a pizza so much as a cautionary tale. A melted crime scene in a cloud of smoke. A beautiful sourdough crust reduced to a tragic calzone-adjacent creature with pepperoni freckles and a deeply ungraceful limp.
I surveyed the damage, and texted Dean, who was in the workshop, blissfully unaware:
“I believe I have made the case for a pizza screen.”
He responded exactly like you’d expect from a man who has witnessed this pattern before.
So yes, we are ordering a pizza screen. Every day is a school day.
