Pizza Paraphernalia

You can probably make a decent pie with stuff you already have, but to make a killer pizza, we've found the following tools to be indispensable:

1. Scale That Measures in Grams. Pizza dough is all about hydration. One cup of bread flour will be lighter than 1 cup of 00 becaucse the 00 is finer and therefore more dense. So by weight our ingredients we are standardizing our hydration, so that a 65% hydrated dough (100 parts flour, 65 parts watter) will be 65% no matter how dense your flour. We use a cheap scale from Target that works great.
2. Pizza Proofing Pans w/ Lids. Probably the least essential item on the list. These are where you put your dough to rise. We have three and when ever we make more than three dough balls, we use plastic food storage containers for the rest and I don't think anyone could tell which came from which container. The advantage of the proofing pans is the size. They are perfectly suited for a dough ball weighing up to 300g. When you're ready to pull the dough, it will be large and round so you don't have to handle the dough as much to get it ready for toppings (handling the dough releases the gasses produced during the rise that give your crust flavor and puffiness).
   
3. Pizza Peel. Go to your local restaurant supply and buy one today. You prepare your pizza on the peel and then use it to transfer it to your oven/grill. We have a small-medium sized short handle one that is perfect for the size pie we make.
4. Baking Stone. Another must have. This will get you as close to pizza baked in a brick oven as your going to get without the brick oven. We wouldn't think of making a pizza without one, and you shouldn't either.
   
5. Gas Grill. Most oven's only get up to about 500 degrees. And that's just not hot enough to cook the perfect pizza. You need heat, and lots of it. Our gas grill's temperature gauge goes up to 650, and needle goes off the chart when we have it on high. The hotter the better. We put our baking stone on top of an upside down 9" round baking pan, and then fire up the grill. We keep the burners in the middle at about 3/4 of the way up to prevent the bottom of the pizza from cooking faster than the top. We let our grill heat up for at least 45 minutes. This gets the grill super hot and allows the stone to soak up the heat.
   
6. Pizza Pan. Used for slicing and serving. We have a big one and it is too big. Don't get a pan larger than you're stone.
7. Quality Pizza Slicer. It seems like there are as many cheap slicers as there are bad recipes. Get a good one that will last. If you're serious about pizza, you'll be using this quite a bit.
   
8. Wine Decanter. Ok, this is not specifically related to pizza, but we rarely have pizza without wine. If you drink red wine with your pizza (or otherwise), and you're not decanting it, you're missing out. The longer the decant the better, shoot for 1-4 hours.

You'll might notice that I didn't mention a rolling pin. You really should only use a rolling pin if you prefer crispy thin crust pizza. Other than that, pull and toss by hand.

I also didn't mention a mixer. When we started making pizza, we used a KitchenAid stand mixer. It was great. Then we got a Magic Mill, even better. Then we made the biggest upgrade possible - kneading by hand. There is just no substitute for kneading your own dough.