Most launch failures happen before the peel reaches the oven. Dough that has started to stick won’t come off cleanly however good your technique is, so this page starts with what makes pizza stick, then the dusting, the slide check and the launch itself, and ends with turning and getting the pizza out.

Why pizza sticks to the peel

The dusting got wet. As King Arthur Baking puts it, flour is mostly starch, so when it gets wet it’s very sticky. The longer a topped pizza sits, the more moisture reaches the peel.
Time on the peel. A pizza that slides when you lay it down can glue itself in place while you arrange the toppings.
A tear or a leak. Sauce that seeps through a thin spot or a hole bonds the dough to the peel. Patch tears before you sauce.
A damp or warm peel. Flour turns sticky on a wet or steamy surface, so start each pizza on a cool, dry peel.

Dusting: match it to the oven

There’s no one right dusting. Good sources disagree, and the right choice depends on how hot your surface is and how wet your dough is.

Dusting	How it behaves	Notes
Flour	Forkish’s choice: a light dusting of the same flour as the dough, on a wooden peel	Turns sticky if it gets wet, so keep the build quick
Semolina	King Arthur’s choice: it spreads evenly, so less is needed	America’s Test Kitchen finds it chars less readily than all-purpose flour
Parchment	King Arthur uses a round cut slightly smaller than the pizza, loaded with the pizza	King Arthur notes that it chars between 450 and 500°F, so skip it in very hot ovens; check the paper’s rating and keep it away from the broiler
Cornmeal	Keeps dough from sticking, as Modernist Pizza notes	Forkish avoids it and other coarse grains because they interfere with a delicate crust

Whichever you use, use only as much as it takes to keep the pizza moving. Excess dusting falls onto the hot surface, where it scorches and leaves a bitter, gritty layer on the next base. Ooni’s troubleshooting article on burnt bases lists too much flour under the pizza or on the stone among the causes, and suggests a perforated peel so the excess falls through. Forkish wipes the burnt flour off his steel between pizzas. In a pizza oven, where the floor is far hotter, keep the dusting lightest of all. If you’re already tasting it, the Pizza Doctor’s “Bitter, burnt dust” path helps tell burnt flour from a burnt crust.

The slide check

Shake the peel with a short back-and-forth motion and watch the whole pizza move. Forkish does it before he tops the dough and again before it goes into the oven; King Arthur also checks after saucing and on the way to the oven.

If part of it sticks:

Try a few more quick shakes first.
Still stuck? Gently lift that edge and toss a little flour or semolina underneath.
If it keeps sticking, stop. King Arthur’s fallbacks are to slide a bench knife underneath, move the pizza onto parchment, or fold it into a calzone. Forkish’s view is that dealing with it now beats a pizza doing “a belly flop into a super-hot oven.”

Build fast on the peel

Forkish sets up his toppings before he shapes the dough: sauce with a spoon, cheese cut or grated, everything within reach. He then dresses the pizza after it’s on a very lightly floured wooden peel, rather than topping it on the counter and dragging it on, which he finds too difficult with soft home doughs. Top it, check that it slides, and launch straight away.

The launch

Forkish describes two ways to load the pizza. In both, hold the handle a few inches higher than the front of the peel, so the dough comes off more easily and predictably.

The quick pull. Shake the peel once or twice so you can feel the pizza slide. Reach in until the front edge of the peel lines up with the back of the steel or stone, then, without hesitating, pull the peel back toward you in one controlled jerk. Forkish compares it to flipping an omelet: a half-effort may not work.
The stuttered pull. Set the peel all the way in, with its leading edge at the back of the stone, and work it back toward you in a series of short shakes, letting the pizza walk off onto the surface.

King Arthur describes a third version for a wooden peel: angle the peel onto the stone with its tip where the pizza should land and jiggle continuously, so the pizza slides down the peel like a ramp.

Practice where it’s safe. Forkish suggests practicing with an untopped round of dough slid from the peel onto the counter, again and again, and treating the first pizza of a session as a test.

Which peel for which job

A wooden peel for launching. Forkish uses wood because moist, raw dough slides off it more easily than off metal; King Arthur prefers wood’s coarse grain for the same reason. Keep it dry.
A thin metal peel for turning and retrieving. Its thin edge slides under a baked crust. Perforated metal peels have less surface for the dough to stick to and let excess dusting fall through, as Forkish and Ooni note.
A small round turning peel is useful in pizza ovens, where you turn the pizza several times without taking it out.

Best pizza peels compares sizes and materials.

Turning in a kitchen oven

In a kitchen oven at 500 to 550°F, there’s no hurry. Modernist Pizza notes that the temperature of a home oven’s lining varies by tens of degrees from spot to spot, with the back corners tending to run hot. If one side of the pizza is browning faster, turn it front to back once, around the middle of the bake; Forkish uses a pair of tongs. If it’s browning evenly, leave it alone. Every opening of the door lets heat out.

Turning in a pizza oven

In a pizza oven, the side nearest the flame colors fast, so turning is part of the bake. The details depend on the model, so start with its manual. These steps apply to any of them:

Set the flame for the style before you launch. A New York pizza needs lower, controlled heat throughout. If pizzas are burning on top before the base is done, or burning on one side, Ooni’s troubleshooting advice is to turn the flame down before the next launch. That’s an adjustment for a problem, not a rule that every pizza goes in on a low flame.
Let the base set before the first turn. Forkish explains that a Neapolitan base has to set quickly so it can be turned before the side nearest the fire burns, and warns that sliding a peel under a wet dough whose base hasn’t set can turn the middle to soup.
Watch from the moment it lands, and turn by color. Turn whenever the side nearest the flame has colored, before an edge burns, rather than on a fixed count. In a bake of a minute or two, that means the first turn comes early. The EU specification for Pizza Napoletana describes the pizzaiolo lifting the edge with a metal peel and turning the pizza toward the fire, while keeping it on the same area of the floor.
Expect a short bake. The Planner’s windows run 1 to 2 minutes for a Neapolitan-style pizza, 2 to 3 for Roman tonda and 4 to 6 for New York in a gas oven.

If one side still burns despite regular turning, check where the pizza sits and how even its thickness is; the Pizza Doctor’s “One side burns” path goes through both.

Getting it out

Slide a thin metal peel under the pizza from the front, lift it out and move it onto a rack for a minute or two so steam doesn’t soften the base. Then slice it, and add any finishing touches once it’s cut.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	Fix next time
Stuck to the peel	Wet dusting, time on the peel, a tear, or a damp peel	Dry peel, quick build, slide check after topping, patch tears first
Bitter, burnt grit on the base	Too much dusting on the surface	Less dusting; brush the surface between pizzas once it’s safe to
Pizza folds or bunches as it lands	A slow or hesitant pull	One committed motion; practice on the counter
One side dark, the other pale	Not turned soon enough, or placed near the hot side	Turn by color; start farther from the flame
Base burnt, top raw, in a pizza oven	Stone too hot for the style	Let the reading come back into range; lower the flame

The Pizza Doctor has a path for each of these.

Sources

Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016): chapter 2 (turning a Neapolitan pizza once the base sets) and chapter 5 (“A Quick Note About Hearth Pizzas”, “Step 6: Set Up Your Pizza Station”, “Step 8: Top the Pizza and Load It into the Oven”, “Step 9: Bake the Pizza” and dusting the peel).
King Arthur Baking: “The stress-free way to load your pizza in the oven” (semolina, parchment, the jiggle and fallbacks). Checked October 14, 2026.
America’s Test Kitchen: “A better dust for your peel: semolina”. Checked October 14, 2026.
Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1: printed page 287 (cornmeal) and page 390 (uneven heat in home ovens).
Ooni: “My pizza is burning”, Ooni help centre (excess dusting flour, perforated peels and turning the flame down before launching). Checked October 14, 2026.
European Commission, Regulation (EU) No 97/2010, Annex II: the Pizza Napoletana specification (turning during the bake).