Montanara Pizza Recipe: Naples' Flash-Fried Then Baked Pizza

A montanara is a pizza that’s fried before it’s baked. A round of Neapolitan-style dough goes into hot oil until it puffs and turns golden, then gets its toppings and a short spell in a hot oven, just long enough to melt the cheese. Modernist Pizza describes the result as basically a Neapolitan crust deep-fried before it’s topped, and likens it to a pizza on fry bread. It is mostly found in Naples’s own pizzerias.

It is a different dish from pizza fritta, which is folded around its filling, sealed and cooked entirely in the oil.

Where it comes from

According to Pizza Today, the montanara began with the wives of Naples pizza makers, who fried leftover dough, topped it with a little leftover ragù and grated Parmesan or Romano, and served it at home or sold it on the street. That older version wasn’t baked after frying.

The oven finish is credited to Antonio Starita, whose family’s pizzeria in the Materdei district of Naples dates to 1901, when it opened as a winery; it began serving pizza in the 1940s. Modernist Pizza singles out its crackly-crusted montanara as a signature dish. Starita’s partner in New York, Roberto Caporuscio, told Pizza Today that frying first and then finishing in the oven was Starita’s technique: the fried base gets its toppings and a brief spell in the oven.

Pizza Today traced this version’s US spread to Starita and the Caporuscios, reporting that Starita introduced it at a demonstration at A Mano in Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 2007. In 2012 the Caporuscios, who already ran Keste in Greenwich Village, opened Don Antonio in New York in partnership with Starita, and its Montanara Starita became the restaurant’s bestseller. In 2013 Giorgia Caporuscio won first place in the Classic Pizza category of the Caputo Cup in Naples with a montanara, which Modernist Pizza notes made her the second woman to win it.

The dough

This recipe’s dough is an editorial starting point, not Saveur’s published dough or a tested frying formula: the Pizza Planner’s Neapolitan-style dough as it plans it for an outdoor pizza oven, 60% water, 3% salt and 0.3% instant yeast, with an overnight rest in the fridge. Other Neapolitan-style doughs can be used too; Pizza Today’s account of the original starts with leftovers. That’s the firmer of the Planner’s two Neapolitan-style doughs. Its 70% home-oven dough is made wetter for a 6- to 10-minute bake, which a montanara doesn’t get. Saveur’s dough for this pizza is similar in water, about 60% by our calculation, but adds a little sugar and olive oil and rests 48 hours in the fridge.

That makes four balls of about 250 g, the Planner’s portion for a 12-inch Neapolitan-style pizza. Caporuscio told Pizza Today that a dough ball for a 12-inch pizza fries down to a 10-inch crust.

1. Mix the dough, rest it briefly, and knead or fold until it is cohesive and smooth.
2. First rise: keep it covered in a lightly oiled container at room temperature for about 2 hours (the Planner allows 1½ to 3).
3. Divide into four 250 g pieces and shape them into balls without tearing the surface.
4. Refrigerate the covered balls for about a day.
5. Warm them, covered, for 1½ to 3 hours before frying, until they are soft, airy and stretch without springing back.

The Planner doesn’t plan the frying or the broiler finish, so follow the timings below for those.

Sauce and cheese

The Starita montanara, as served at Don Antonio and Keste, is topped with tomato sauce and imported smoked buffalo mozzarella, then basil. Saveur’s version of the recipe uses:

• Sauce: a cooked tomato sauce, ½ cup per pizza. Saveur cooks chopped garlic and chile flakes in olive oil until golden, adds hand-crushed whole peeled tomatoes packed in purée, basil sprigs and salt, and simmers it until slightly thick, 35 to 40 minutes. Take out the basil before using it.
• Cheese: 1 pound (454 g) of shredded smoked mozzarella for four pizzas, about 4 ounces (113 g) each, plus ¼ cup of grated Pecorino Romano in all.
• Basil and oil: 16 to 20 basil leaves, and a drizzle of olive oil over each pizza.

Frying safely

Hot oil can burn you and start a fire. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and the National Fire Protection Association give the essentials:

• Use a deep, heavy pot. Saveur’s recipe uses 2 inches of oil in an 8-quart saucepan. FSIS advises against cast iron for frying, as it breaks oil down faster.
• Use a deep-fry thermometer and heat the oil slowly to the temperature you need, here 350°F (175°C). If you see wisps of smoke or the oil smells, turn off the burner: the oil is too hot.
• Never leave hot oil unattended, and stay in the kitchen while you fry.
• Keep water away from the oil. A drop of water in hot oil turns instantly to steam and spatters. Dry your hands and tools, and lower the dough in gently so the oil doesn’t splash.
• Keep a metal lid next to the pot. If the oil catches fire, slide the lid over it, turn off the burner and leave it covered until it is completely cool. Never throw water on a grease fire. If it doesn’t go out, get everyone out and call 911 from outside.

Which oil: Saveur uses canola. FSIS lists peanut, canola, corn, grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, vegetable and olive oil as suitable for deep frying because of their high smoke points.

Make it

Makes four montanara, about 10 inches across. Active time about 45 minutes, including the sauce. Elapsed time about 29 hours, most of it with the dough in the fridge. Cook time about 2 to 3½ minutes per pizza.

1. Preheat. About 30 minutes before you fry, set a pizza stone or steel on a rack under the broiler and heat it under the broiler for 30 minutes, as Saveur does. Check your oven’s manual for which racks and how much broiler use it allows.
2. Heat the oil. Pour oil into the pot to a depth of 2 inches and heat it slowly to 350°F (175°C).
3. Shape. Dust a dough ball with fine semolina. Press it out with your fingertips into a round about 10 inches across, leaving a 1-inch rim, then stretch the middle thinner. Prick it all over with a fork, as Saveur does.
4. Fry, 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Lower the dough gently into the oil, away from you. Fry, turning once with a spider or tongs, until golden and puffed. Saveur’s version takes 1 to 2 minutes; Caporuscio fries his for about 30 seconds before a wood-fired oven finishes it.
5. Top. Lift it out, let the oil drip back into the pot, and set it on a peel. Spread ½ cup of sauce over it, then a quarter of the mozzarella, pecorino and basil, and drizzle with olive oil.
6. Finish. Slide it onto the hot stone and broil until the cheese melts, about 1 to 1½ minutes. Watch it the whole time.
7. Serve hot. Check the thermometer and let the oil come back to 350°F before frying the next one.

In a pizza oven: Don Antonio finishes the montanara in a wood-burning oven. Fry as above, then bake only until the cheese melts, watching it the whole time.

Sources

• Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya, Modernist Pizza (2021), volume 1, pages 123–124 (montanara and pizza fritta as variations of Neapolitan pizza), 166 (Pizzeria Starita a Materdei and its montanara) and 220 (Keste, the Caporuscios, Don Antonio and the 2013 Caputo Cup).
• Pizza Today, “Fry Day: The Montanara” (online April 28, 2014): the Naples origin, A Mano, the Montanara Starita, Caporuscio’s account of the oven finish, frying time and crust size. Checked October 14, 2026.
• “Pizza Montanara Starita (Fried Pizza with Marinara Sauce)” and “Neapolitan Pizza Dough,” Saveur (May 2013 issue): oil, temperature, frying, toppings, broiler finish and dough. Checked October 14, 2026.
• GialloZafferano, “Fried pizza with ricotta and cicoli” (recipe by Daniele Uditi): pizza fritta fillings in the comparison table. Checked October 14, 2026.
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Deep Fat Frying and Food Safety” (last updated August 9, 2024): pots, water and grease fires, attending the fryer, oils. Checked October 14, 2026.
• National Fire Protection Association, “Cooking safety”: staying in the kitchen, heating oil, smoke, and smothering a grease fire. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Pizza Planner (jayarr.pizza): the Neapolitan-style outdoor-oven dough and schedule. The dough quantities are the Planner’s for four 250 g balls; the Saveur dough’s water percentage is calculated.