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[Avumede]

In my new apartment, I have a small oven, in which I have about 4 unglazed clay tiles.  I like to make pizza for me and my family, which usually means I make 4 to 6 small, thin pizzas.   My apartment has a very sensitive smoke detector, one that I cannot disable, and usually, after cooking 2 or so pizzas, the smoke detector goes off.  I believe what is happening is that the cornmeal I use on my pizza peal is burning in my oven.  Last time I attempted to scrape away some of the burnt cornmeal, but that made it much, much worse.   I think the burnt cornmeal went into the ventilation holes in the oven (I have a gas oven).

Any tips on baking pizza and preventing excess smoke?

[bortz]

All I can think of is put a rag over the detector and/or open the windows (weather permitting). Sometimes my detector goes off and I fan it with a rag to quiet it. You may wish to put a fan aimed at it to keep the sensor clear of particulate.
Is this a hard wired detector and that's why you can't disable it?

[canadianbacon]

Hello,

You are using cornmeal - don't use it - it is indeed responsible for all your smoke !

Use flour and your problems are over

I was using cornmeal for several months, and realized what a huge mess this was making in the stove,
it was also creating a LOT of smoke, when I was pre-heating the oven for a good 30 mins at 550 or so.

I then did a good cleaning of my oven, switched to flour on my peel and the smoke problems are a thing of the past.

Even at 550 degrees, you should never had any smoke when baking the pizza, perhaps it's just my oven, but I never get
smoking.  I don't keep my pizzas in long however, - about 6-8 minutes MAX depending on the size of the pie.

Mark

[Avumede]

Unfortunately, I have very poor ventilation, due to the New York law requiring apartments with kids in them to have child-proof windows (which hardly open at all).  I could try un-childproofing the kitchen window only, it could help.   My kids would have to put themselves through serious contortions to even reach the window, so I'm not too worried about it.

I don't see anything particular on the smoke detector to disable.  There is no battery I can see, and just some wires leading off somewhere.  I'm hesitant to fool around with it.  I did try putting a damp paper towel over it, but it didn't work.  When I took the paper towel down in a few hours, it was dry.  Perhaps the heat from the kitchen dried it, and that's when it went off.

Now that I'm writing this, I just remembered that Cook's Illustrated put their pizzas on wax paper, directly on the stone.  That would keep me from having to use cornmeal.  Perhaps it would solve my problem!

[Pete-zza]

Avumede,

I think you meant to say parchment paper, not wax paper.

Peter

[Avumede]

Use flour and your problems are over

Good advice.  I'll try it using flour, or perhaps try the wax paper thing (has anyone tried that?). 

[Avumede]

Avumede,

I think you meant to say parchment paper, not wax paper.

Peter

I did indeed mean wax paper, but it's likely I'm just misremembering.  I'll try parchment paper instead.  Thanks for the correction.

[canadianbacon]

I'll add one more thing for you 

Many times I don't want to use a lot of flour on my peel, so what I do is this, I put on an ok amount but don't go nuts,
now if you find that the pizza is sticking to the peel after you have put your toppings on etc,
you can try my trick.

I always have an angled spatula handy.  why ? ah well read on 

I am not the quickest person at putting my toppings on, many times I have already rolled out my dough and it's on the paddle....
by the time I have everything on the pizza the dough is sticking to the pizza peel.

I will then take my spatula and run it around the bottom of the pizza, usually I have left over flour on my counter so I run the spatula
in the flour first, then just run the spatula around the dough...... go around the whole thing, just dislodging it, now you are ready and it will slide right off the peel 

* I sometimes take a full 10 mins or so to put toppings on my pizza * so that means the dough has been sitting on the paddle that whole time sopping up that dry flour.....

here's a pic of the spatula I use:

[Nathan]

I used to use parchment paper myself.  At the time I didn't have a peel yet.  So I would make the pizza on parchment paper, transfer it to the stone, then after I let it cook for a couple minutes I'd pull the paper out from under the pizza and finish cooking.  The exposed parchment would burn (at about 500 degrees) if I left it in for the entire cooking time but it won't hurt anything.

[varasano]

I agree - NO cornmeal. Flour only. Put a plastic bag over the detector, but don't forget to take it off afterwards

[Pizza Meister]

You would not have to use any cormeal or flour if you had a Super Peel.  It uses a conveyor action to move the pizza onto or off the peel.  Of course I am a bit biased , but Cook's Illustrated gave it very good marksin the current issue and on-line review in their "equipment corner".  I will take $3 off the current price of 29.95 for anyone from this forum who is interested, until the end of March.

www.superpeel.com

[Avumede]

So, I finally made pizza again, and tried some of the suggestions here.  I made two pizzas, one I used parchment paper, one I used flour.

The first pizza, I put the pizza on a square of parchment paper.  I did not trim the square to exactly the size of the pizza, figuring (like one poster said) that I could just pull out the whole thing after a few minutes.  Perhaps the parchment paper I had was unusual (my wife bought it in Trinidad), but after a few minutes of baking, it browned considerably, and when I lifted up the pizza and pulled out the parchment paper, the paper crumbled.  I had to take the entire pizza out, brush out all the crumbles of parchment paper from the oven,  cut the paper to pizza size, and put it back in.  When I took it out, the pizza had baked nicely, but I had to carefully remove all the parchment paper from the bottom of the pizza, which was crumbling to my touch. 

Next pizza, I used flour.  I made two mistakes, I think.  One, I used too much flour.  I wanted to be sure it stuck, and even when I assembled the toppings on the pizza as fast as I could (around a minute or so), it was close to being stuck by the time I was done.  Second, I did not brush off excess flour from my peel.  When I put my pizza in the oven, the flour went in too, burning up immediately and producing a lot of smoke.   So my smoke alarm went off.  Sigh.   When I ate the pizza, the excess flour I put on the bottom gave the bottom crust a very unpleasant taste of burnt flour.   

A few thing I could try:  One, getting a different kind of parchment paper.  Two, cooking at a lower temperature (this was at 515 or so degrees).  Three, use flour, but less of it (perhaps trying canadidanbacon's technique).  Four, something like the Super Peel. 

[MTPIZZA]

I do recall a thread on this site where they discussed this topic of sticking dough on the peel..One solution was to lift up the edge of the dough after toppings are on and puff a bit of air under the dough...the dough lifts up slightly and moves around on the peal like ball bearings are under it, riding on a cushion of air.. BUT BEWARE...the pizza could slide right off the side when transferring to the oven use both hands.
With regards to flouring your peal, just take a couple pinches of flour and toss them in the middle, then spread it out until there is just a dusting NO LAYER of flour...
Prior to stretching my dough I hold it up on edge and rotate the wet edge on flour that is on the counter, thus making the edge less lightly to grab hold of when toppings are added..good luck!

[Pizza Meister]

I will still honor the $3 off offer that I made a while back for forum members ordering a Super Peel, and will extend this offer till June 1st, just to forum members.  I also have a limited number of "last year's models", which I can let go for $20 ea. plus shipping.

Once you have tried this method to transfer your dough, you will use it again and again.

Pizza Meister

[PizzaBrewer]

If you're using an aluminum peel, get a wooden one.  Since buying the wooden peel I barely have to use any flour (I never use cornmeal) and I almost never have a stuck dough anymore.  I'd say it's a 90% improvement over the metal peel.

---Guy

[duckjob]

I use a wood peel, a very very light dusting of flour and the blowing air under the dough trick. It works like a champ. Like someone already mentioned though, hold the peel steady or the pizza will slide right off onto the floor, I've had a few close calls myself.