Oh man, I did that at least a half dozen times before I discovered parchment paper. I explicitly mention parchment in my pizza primer because I had so many problems with pizzas sticking to the peel. Particularly heavily topped ones, the ones that take you 15 minutes to prepare and then about 3 seconds to destroy.

Seriously, a 5 dollar investment in parchment paper will save you months of anguish.

I still have pictures of my nephews' funny faces when I served them what I called 'car crash pizza' after just this kind of peel disaster. I feel your pain!

I agree with Floyd that parchment paper is the easiest way to avoid pizza mishaps. This was the "training wheels" method I used at first. Be sure to pull the paper out after a couple of minutes -- it gets more and more charred the longer it stays in, and I've had a couple of pieces fall apart in the oven, which makes the pizza a lot harder to serve.

You definitely don't want to make the pizza on the stone and then put the stone in the oven. The value of the stone is its heat retention, so preheating it for an hour or two is necessary for it to be worthwhile.

What I do now is this. I have a big wooden peel that I sprinkle very heavily with semolina flour. I stretch the pizza dough, put it on the peel, and shake the peel a bit to make sure the dough will slide easily. After I add the sauce, I shake the peel again. I shake once more after adding the toppings and cheese. Then, just before opening the oven, I wipe off all the excess semolina around the pizza, so it doesn't wind up in the oven. Semolina is *much* less gritty than corn meal, and I think it makes the pizza crust have a much better texture for eating. Once the pizza is cooked, I have a large metal peel I use to pull the pizza out. The metal peel is much easier to get under the crust since it is so much thinner. This also allows you to load up a second pizza on the wooden peel and still have the metal peel empty for pulling from the oven.

Wood in, metal out, semolina not corn meal, parchment paper (without semolina) for training wheels. That's my advice.

precipice had some good notes; to sum it up:

- semonila/cornmeal the peel
- stretch the dough, then place it on the peel
- shake the peel to make sure the dough moves
- top pizza
- shake the peel to make sure the dough moves

When I put the pizza on the stone, the peel will touch the stone and then I PULL real quick. The pizza will drop straight down onto the stone.

As for the stone being ruined, don't count on it. Take it out, wash it , and it will be as good as new. Just think of this as breaking it in :)

All else fails, parchment works, but I'm not a fan.

When getting the pizza off of my peel I ALWAYS shake the peel gently just before I go to the oven. If it doesn't slide freely I use a thin metal flipper to gently get under the dough. I do this in stages, just get the flipper under there and pull it out, do this around the circumference of the pizza and do the shake test again.

Parchment is also very useful especially if you are doing more than one pizza and only have one peel.

JM

Have you tried Pizza Screens?-

Go to your local restaurant supply or find them online here-
Amazon Pizza Screens

First, I like to make sure that the pizza slides around on the peel before I attempt to slide it off the peel in the oven. Another thing to try is practicing with smaller pizzas before trying a larger one.

As for the black, That's fine. It shouldn't hurt at all. I hope that the smell goes away soon.

When I make pizza I just put it on a baking plate (with parchment on) and place the plate on the hot stone, it seems to work just fine.

Kidziti,

I would like to send you one of our Super Peels for the Holidays. A gift from us to you, so that you NEVER, EVER have this problem again.

Pizzameister
superpeel.com