Pizza Spinner: One of the Most Important Pizza Tools You Don't Know

Are you struggling with the uneven baking of pizza in my pizza oven? Perhaps the pizza is burnt on one side and almost raw on the other side? Then you need to turn your pizza, and a useful tool to do this in a blazing hot oven is a pizza spinner turning fork.

What Is a Pizza Spinner?

A pizza spinner, also called a pizza hook or turning fork, is a tool for turning pizza in a pizza oven. They usually come with a long handle to protect the user from the heat of the oven. Pizza spinner forks come with two or more teeth (tynes). These are used to move the pizza more easily, both for turning and for lifting the pizza to check for doneness.

Pizza spinners are usually sold in pairs since having two gives the user better control over the pizza.

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Why a Pizza Spinner Is Useful

Pizza ovens tend to not bake pizza evenly, you have to turn the pizza to get an even bake. Whether it’s a traditional wood-fired Neapolitan pizza oven, a commercial pizza oven, or even on a pizza steel at home. The reason is that most ovens have one or multiple heat sources that don’t distribute the heat evenly. You can both have a floor with varying temperature, or uneven heat from above. The heat distribution depends on the type of oven you’re baking pizza in:

Wood-Fired Pizza Ovens

In a wood-fired oven, you have a burning fire that heats the oven. When the oven is heated, you start the fire in the middle to heat the floor of the oven. You then later move the fire to one of the sides, or the back of the oven. This is done to make heat up the floor of the oven before baking. When the fire is placed on the side, it creates heat that’s reflected from the dome-shaped ceiling of the oven. And this reflected heat bakes the top of the pizza.

Since the fire is a single heat source, the floor will cool, making it hotter closer to the fire, and cooler further away. You may also experience “hot spots” in the oven, spots that are hotter than the rest of the oven. If you place your pizza on one of these, it can easily burn. You therefore have to be aware of the temperatures in different parts of your pizza oven to bake pizza properly. A useful tool to measure the temperature is an infrared thermometer, that can measure the temperature from a distance. You can read more about it here: The Best Pizza Oven Thermometer.

Since the floor closer to the fire is hotter, you need to turn the pizza during baking to make sure one side is not over or undercooked.

Commercial Electric Pizza Ovens

Most electric pizza ovens have a thick metal or stone surface that heats up fairly even. They also often have a broiler/grill element in the ceiling of the oven that bakes the top of the pizza. Even though they usually don’t have 100% even distribution of heat, there is less need for turning pizza into a commercial electric oven compared to a wood-fired brick oven.

Home Pizza Ovens

There are many types of (portable) home pizza ovens out there. Some are wood-fired, while others are gas-powered (like the Ooni Kada 16). Most of them are however small in size, which means less space for the pizza, making it impossible to not place it right next to the heat source. Because of the size, they are also not as well isolated as a brick oven. This means that they tend to have a more uneven heat distribution. You therefore rarely get an even cook in a small, home pizza oven, making a pizza spinner a very useful tool.

Home Convection Ovens

Temperature differences tend to be less of an issue in a home convection oven. Heat distribution is often uneven, but with the low temperature, and long baking times, it’s less problematic.

If you’re using a thick pizza stone or pizza steel, the heat distribution of the cooking surface is more even. The result makes the bottom of the pizza cooked evenly.

If you’re not using the broiler element to bake your pizza (I strongly recommend doing so, because it can get your oven a lot hotter, thus closer to a proper pizza oven – you can read more about that here: How to Use A Pizza Stone), many ovens tend to be hotter in the back then front. In that case, you want to turn the pizza mid-way to make sure both sides of the pizza are baked evenly.

Who Needs a Pizza Spinner?

A pizza spinner is most useful in pizza ovens with uneven pizza heat distribution. It’s therefore most useful if you’re baking pizza in a wood-fired pizza oven or a small, home pizza oven. Since both types of oven have a single source of heat, making that side of the oven hotter.

How to Use a Pizza Spinner

Pizza spinners are mainly used for two things: turning the pizza and checking if the bottom is done.

Turning The Pizza

The main function of a pizza hook is obviously to spin, or turn, the pizza.

You shouldn’t try to move or turn the pizza right after you place it in the oven. It’s better to wait until the pizza is starting to crisp, else you can easily make holes in the crust or even tear the whole pizza.

When you see that the pizza is starting to crisp up, and one side is more baked than the other, it’s time to turn the pizza. To do that, position the pizza spinner with the teeth facing down over your pizza the teeth right inside the edge (cornicione) of the pizza. Be careful not to puncture the crust, or to make holes. You don’t need to penetrate the pizza with your teeth. Simply place it on top, and turn the pizza, so the undercooked part is facing the heat.

Check for Doneness

The second thing you can use a pizza hook for is to check if the bottom of the pizza is done. All you need to do is place the teeth facing up, push them under the pizza crust, and tilt the edge gently. You should now see the bottom of the pizza. You could also use a pizza peel for this, but using the same tool for both checking and turning is more efficient. If the pizza is close to burnt you don’t want to spend time changing tools. You want to turn the pizza as fast as possible so it doesn’t burn.

It’s also possible to use a pizza spinner to remove the pizza from the oven. You can do that by simply dragging the pizza out to either a serving plate or a cutting board for cutting the pizza. I do however recommend using a pizza peel for this since that’s easier in my opinion.

Alternatives – Pizza Spinner vs Pizza Turning Peel

We can’t talk about pizza spinner forks without mentioning turning peels, that’s a common alternative for turning pizza.

A pizza turning peel is a round small peel, that’s used for the same as a pizza spinner: turning and checking for doneness.

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With practice, a pizza-turning peel is useful in a large oven due to the long handle. But in a smaller home oven, a pizza spinner is a better alternative.

Benefits of Pizza Spinners

Pizza spinners have some benefits over pizza-turning peels:

Easier to Use

The main benefit of pizza spinners is that they are easier to use than a turning peel. If you haven’t tried a turning peel, it requires some practice to use it correctly for turning pizza.

When you use a turning peel, you want to move the pizza to the entrance of the oven and turn it there. Then move the pizza back to the same spot. You want to place the pizza in the exact same spot. The reason is that the spot has cooled down from the pizza. Placing it in a different spot will make it bake faster, and potentially burn. You can also place the pizza in a “hot spot” if you’re not careful. This will make it even more likely to burn.

With a pizza spinner, you don’t need to move the pizza to turn it, since it’s easier to maneuver the pizza. You can however do it, if you’re struggling to turn it inside the oven. Or if you need to take a closer look at the pizza. Drag grip the pizza in the same way as when you’re turning it, and drag the pizza carefully.

Smaller

Pizza spinners are smaller and more compact than pizza-turning peels. You rarely see turning peels with short handles. This makes it inconvenient to use in small, home pizza ovens.

Price

A pair of pizza spinners usually range from 10-30 dollars, making them cheaper than most turning peels.

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Andreas

Andreas, the founder of The Pizza Heaven, has spent the last 20 years mastering the art and craft of Neapolitan pizza. With a profound passion for pizza, sharing, and teaching, he launched this website in 2019 to guide both new and seasoned pizza-makers in elevating their Neapolitan pizza skills.

Pizza Spinner: One of the Most Important Pizza Tools You Don’t Know