I made this shield to protect the crust of my pizza from drying out too much while cooking. In the past I've used aluminum foil to protect the crust, but it's a lot of work to prep the pizza, and it tends to stick to the cheese and I end up with aluminum bits or else tearing off big chunks of the pizza. For a few years I was able to do without shielding since the Freschetta 8" pizzas didn't cook for as long. Unfortunately Freshetta discontinued their 8" pizzas, and I'm stuck with the DiGiorno which isn't quite as good.

The DiGiorno pizzas require a much longer cooking time or else you end up with a pizza that's still cold (or even frozen) in the middle. But the long cooking time ends up drying out and making the outer crust rock hard. With the shield in place the crust comes out cooked but nice and soft.

To make the shield I cut two 8.5" disks out of 3/4" and 1/2" wood and stacked them together. I then wrapped them with a 2.75" wide strip of aluminum and secured the ends together. I screwed the aluminum to the side of the disk and then hammered the whole thing over so it was flattened on the top of the disk. Presto, a pizza shield!