Wood or metal peels,parchment and effects on crust
Hi,
This is a very basic question but I haven't located an answer to it yet. I just purchased a metal peel from Amazon and used it for the first time last night. Not quite sure why I chose metal as I did read some comments about how dough tends to stick to a wood peel less than a metal peel. So,my son and I made pizza last night using Forklish's straight overnight recipe. We stretched and formed the pizza on a large cutting board and then transferred it to the cornmeal dusted peel. We then dressed it with the toppings. We then attempted to slide it onto the 15" pizza stone and we had some sticking which caused the dough to buckle,get out of round and on the stone it ended up being smaller than the size it was on the peel. All this said it all ended up quite well. The dough was a little thicker than ideal but the taste/flavor and chewiness of the dough was quite good. Could have used more charred,bubbly spots on the crust.
My question is this. Is using a wood peel easier than a metal peel,does it stick less? For some reason the stone I bought says not to use alot of flour on it as it would burn. This is why we used cornmeal on the peel. Lastly and importantly; do people use parchment and if so are the results on the crust less ideal than if the crust was directly on the stone. Does the parchment not allow the stone to pull moisture out of the dough and does that effect the final quality/taste/texture of the crust. I used parchment years ago to slide the crusts in the oven off of the backside of a half sheet pan and it worked very well.
Sorry about the long post but I thought some background and clear questions would yield me the best answers. Going to be baking in a dutch oven tomorrow and will try some batards on the stone later in the week. I dreamt all last nite about bread doughs! Exciting!
Best,
Vance