Frustaci Family Pizza
We bought a Gozney Pizza Oven on our Baby Moon in Santa Barbara and had a tough time figuring out how to make delicious pizzas on our own. Fortunately, our great friends, Giovanna and Tomasso Frustaci, came to our home in St. Charles to help us master the art of fresh, homemade Italian pizza in our pizza oven. The recipe that follows is one we borrowed from them.
Serves: 6 pizzas
Prep time: 1.5 hrs
Downloadable Recipe Card: here
What You’ll Need
Gozney Pizza Oven or similar
A big towel (you’ll wrap the dough bowl while it rises)
12oz (ish) water cup (or Pyrex measuring glass)
Ingredients
Pizza Dough
3 lbs all purpose flour (~6 small pizzas)
2 cups water
1 1/2 tbs active dry yeast
2 tbs olive oil
Salt, to taste
4 tbs cornmeal
Pizza Toppings
2 tbs oregano
1/2 cup parmesan
1 cup pizza sauce or marinara sauce
1 lb fresh mozzarella
Assortment of fresh veggies and meats
Instructions
Note: For this recipe, you’ll make the dough first, and let it rise for about an hour. During this time, preheat pizza oven to 800°F. Once dough has risen, and oven is hot, you’re ready to rock.
The Dough
Note: What your shaggy dough should look like before you cover with saran wrap and a towel to let it rise.
First, let’s prepare to make our dough
Fill Pyrex liquid measuring glass with 2 cups of warm-ish water. Add active dry yeast and olive oil. Let sit for about 5 minutes. While that’s sitting, add flour salt to mixing bowl, using your wooden spoon to combine.
Now you’ll mix your dough
Add yeast/water/olive oil mix to flour mixture, stirring until you start to form dough. You don’t want your dough too dry, and you don’t want your dough too wet, so if your original water mixture doesn’t seem enough, add additional water little by little until your dough is ready. Your dough is ready when it looks a little shaggy and lumpy.
Let the dough rise
Cover your shaggy, lumpy dough with saran wrap, and wrap your bowl in a big towel, ensuring the bowl is fully enveloped by the towel. Set dough aside, covered, for an hour to rise.
Now it’s time to knead the dough
On a large, clean countertop, sprinkle flour to give yourself a work space for kneading the dough. Remove dough from mixing bowl and place onto freshly floured surface. Knead the dough with hands, taking it from shaggy and lumpy to just smooth and slightly tacky. If your dough holds it shape when you hold it up, that's a good sign it’s ready. You don’t want to under-work your dough, but you don’t want to over-work your dough either.
The Pizza
Note: By the time you’re at this point in the recipe, it’s been more than an hour since you made your dough, your dough is kneaded and ready, and your pizza oven is heated up to 800°F.
Note: What your dough balls will look like if you’ve done it right!
With your kneaded dough ready, cut apart into six dough balls
From your large, kneaded dough ball. cut into 6 equal dough balls, these will be your pizza crusts. (Pro-tip: Make pizzas one at a time. Cool dough holds its shape better, making getting it in and out of the oven far easier. So, while tempting, to prep all 6 pizzas at the same time, don’t do this).
With one dough ball, prepare your pizza crust
Sprinkle flour on countertop, press (or roll) dough ball into a pizza shape, flipping it one-to-three times until it takes a shape you like. Then, sprinkle cornmeal on your pizza peel to make it easy for your dough to slide off the pizza peel into the oven. Lift pizza crust dough off counter and onto the cornmeal-ed pizza peel.
Make-a-the-pizza
Spoon about 2 tbs of pizza sauce onto your pizza crust, then sprinkle sauce with oregano, parmesan, and any additional spices. Next, add your favorite meats and veggies. Finally, over the top, add mozzarella or other cheeses. Your pizza is ready for the oven!
Get your pizza in the oven
Take your pizza on the cornmeal-ed, wooden pizza peel to pizza oven and give it a shake to get it off the peel into the oven, keeping it as flat as possible (this might take a few tries to get the motion down). Let cook there for ~1 minute, keeping an eye on it the whole time. This is a very active process! Once the crust closest to the fire is starting to look cooked, give this pizza a quarter-turn using your turning pizza peel. Continue tending to the pizza, doing quarter-turns until it’s done. You don’t want to burn it, so this active tending to the pizza is critical! Pizza’s will take ~2-3 minutes each to be cooked through. When done, pull from oven using the turning pizza peel, laying it atop your cutting/serving board to slice it up.
Serve hot and ready to your friends and family, reminding them the labor of love that went into each slice! Repeat this process until you are good and full, and perhaps, ready for a nap. Night, night! :)
Note: This is what you don’t want! This is the result of 1) not using a wooden pizza peel to put the pizza in the oven, 2) letting the dough get too warm and therefore it was sticky on the pizza peel and wouldn’t pop off, and 3) the pizza flick maneuver not being great. This will PROBABLY happen to you when you make pizza for the first time in your pizza oven, it just means you care. Try again. You got this!
The Finished Product
If you do it wrong, your pizza will look like the one on the left. If you do it right, it will look like the one on the right. Good luck! Keep trying until you get consistently awesome results. Next thing you know, it will be second nature. You got this!
Not right — Oopsie!
Absolutely perfect — Yummy!
Enjoy!
I hope you love this pizza recipe! We’ve had many a special days with our Italian friends making pizzas in their backyard, so it was such a treat to have them over to learn to make pizza in our home and backyard. I hope you are successful making your own pizza, and can’t wait to hear what your favorite toppings are.
