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29
DEC
2016

Bubble Popper Does More than Pop Bubbles

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Be it ever so humble there’s no tool quite as handy a multi-tasker as the bubble popper. Don’t be fooled by the fanciful name bubble popper or the $10 price tag. This simple tool can push, pull, poke, stir, lift, dock, and move. It’s easier to illustrate than explain, so we took a few photos at a recent outdoor feed for our high school swim team. We roasted potatoes for oven fries and baked pizza to contribute to post-workout refueling.

bubble popper

Purpose of the bubble popper

American Metalcraft says the popper was made to “pop those pesky, doughy bubbles to allow for perfectly cooked pizza.” Although originally a tool used in commercial pizza baking, it’s found a place in the wood-fired oven home tool kit. A quick Amazon search shows several style options. Some have a handle on one end and a sharp point on the other, but we prefer American Metalcraft’s basic aluminum bubble popper because of its light weight and functional hooks at each end. I have several “pokers” hanging alongside other oven tools, close at hand. I use one for stirring food (or popping pesky dough bubbles) and one for positioning pans or wood.

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Leverage, force, and work

The popper is 43 inches long, made of aluminum, and weighs about half a pound. The tool’s light weight is  a plus when you are reaching with outstretched arms to maneuver heavy items in the oven. In general, the sturdier 42″ stirring paddle is better for lifting (moving wood, sliding under a pan to lift it out). However, you don’t have to blow the dust off a physics book to know that a pot or pan lifted at the end of a long tool feels heavier than it does right next to your body.

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Paddle battle?

I tend to use the bubble popper and the stirring paddle together. I opt to use the popper to push, pull, move things that are very deep in the oven, or to pull pans onto the paddle, or even to stir food in a pan. The popper is a great tool that shares functions with the stirring paddle. The popper pokes and pushes burning wood, but it doesn’t load wood. For info on properly loading wood into your wood-fired oven, check out this blog.

I can’t imagine needing a bubble popper in a conventional oven, but anyone fortunate enough to cook in a wood-burning oven will quickly appreciate the versatility of this simple tool.

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