Oven shovel. Tracy Hansen / wikimedia / 2008 / CC BY-SA 3.0
Oven shovels are tools used to lift items into and out of ovens.
They are made of wood or metal, and consist of a “paddle” attached to a handle. Small home ones will be about 40 cm long (15 inches) in total. There is usually a hole at the end of the handle for looping a string through for hanging the shovels in storage.
The paddle end of wood ones will be ½ cm to 1 cm thick (¼ to ⅜ inches).
Oven shovels can be used to:
- lift free-form breads in and out of the oven;
- ease many small ramekin dishes in and out of the oven;
- move pizzas and pizza slices in and out of the oven.
Some metal ones will be shaped like a shovel with sides on the paddle part, like a dustpan. These are for removing ashes from a wood-burning oven.
Oven shovel with edges around the blade. PepeBar / wikimedia / 2017 / CC BY-SA 4.0