Soooo after the pizza oven reveal comes the … pizza! But of course! Before we left Marthas Vineyard, we made sure to snap photos of our pizza making process in the oven we built, from beginning to end. Please note that this is not the same recipe that we use to make pizza in the oven inside of our house in NY – this would work in other portable outdoor ovens like this one. I am going to link a bunch of options below if you’ve been looking for something to make wood fired pizza in! We’ll be sharing our other pizza recipe for pizza in the inside oven soon! Let’s get to it!
*Matt used the ratio from Forno Bravo – we expanded this recipe, and reduced the amount of yeast since it was very humid where we were cooking.
This recipe makes around 5-6 pizzas!
750gr Caputo 00 flour
488gr water
15gr salt
4gr active dry yeast
28 oz can San Marzano peeled tomatoes
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano
Fresh Mozzarella
Basil
Olive Oil
Since the dough needs time to rise, we start by making it first. You want to leave yourself at least 3 hours before the time when you want to actually eat the pizza to make the dough, so it can rise.
4. After 1.5-2 hours flour a surface, and remove the dough from the bowl.
5. Cut the dough into 275gr portions (we weigh the dough on the scale as we cut it) and then shape them into balls. For advice on forming dough balls, youtube videos would be the best visual explanation.
6. Let the finished dough balls rise for 1 hr before cooking covered OR refrigerate until use if you make your dough earlier in the day.
Making the Sauce:
While the dough rises, you can then focus on the sauce, which is a fairly simple process. All you do is pour the peeled tomatoes into a bowl, and mash them up with your hands or a potato masher. Using a blender is not advised because chopping up the tomato seeds releases a bitter flavor. Get your hands in there and smush it all around! Add the black pepper, salt and oregano and that’s it!
Making the Pizza:
If you have a wood fired oven capable of reaching these temperatures, you probably know a thing or two about how to stretch and make the pie, but if not, again Youtube has tons of great videos! The oven should be around 800- 850 degrees F to cook correctly – both internal temperate and the cooking surface. It generally takes about 60 seconds for the pizza to cook!
Once your dough is rolled out you’ll add on the sauce, then the basil, then fresh mozz and lastly just a tiny splash of high quality olive oil! Some add the basil before or after the cooking, and feel passionately that one way is right. We found that with this oven, the short cooking time did not burn the basil, but either way is fine.
Matt is a die hard Margherita pizza fan and thinks that this came out as good as anything he has had at restaurants in New York City and in Italy. In his mind the Margherita is the baseline indicator of how good a pizza restaurant is. This is a simple recipe that benefits from high quality ingredients – 00 flour, bufala mozzarella, and the best tomatoes you can find. Stay tuned for our guide on how to best replicate this type of pizza in a standard home oven!
