Truck brings wood-fired oven, pizza-making school to students

MILFORD — All roads for Frank Zabski seem to lead back to New Havenstyle “ah-beetz,” and now the YouTube celebrity has started a new business: a mobile New Haven Pizza School using his truck with a wood-fired oven.

“It will have a school/party atmosphere,” said Zabski, of Milford.

What sets his pizza school apart from others is that he’ll bring everything “students” need right to their house, including his mobile, wood-fired pizza oven, the table, ingredients, cooking tools, Italian music and, most importantly, his knowhow.

Then guests will “mangia.”

“I still have that passion; I love making

pizza,” Zabski said. “When I see someone take a bite into a piece of my pizza from 10-12 feet away and they close their eyes because it's so good — it's magical to me.”

Zabski is an all-around entrepreneur who owns an Apple support company and, until recently, a data cabling business.

Pizza has always been in his heart. Albert Grande, a national star in the world of pizza — as a promoter, blogger, YouTuber, “pizza evangelist” and “ambassador,” as he is known — got to know Zabski through YouTube.

Grande lives in Hawaii, but has family in the New London area, so he visited Zabski the last time he was in Connecticut and tasted his pizza.

“When you make pizza you make love and he does it,” said Grande, who has a website, pizzatherapy.com. “There's great pizza and there's good pizza. Great pizza you can't get out of your mind. Frank's was great.”

Grande, who mingles with the “movers and shakers of the pizza world,” as he puts it, said Zabski's pizza school is a “fabulous idea.”

“I think there's a real need for learning how to make New Haven pizza,” Grande said. “What I love about New Haven pizza is the loyalty and passion people have about it.

New Haven pizza is in a class of its own.”

Grande said Zabski has the perfect kind of “take you by the hand style” of teaching and he loves that Zabski is so free with sharing information.

Zabski travels the state reviewing pizza restaurants, offers free do-ityourself pizza-making videos on YouTube, and makes a lot of pizza.

Entrepreneur Zabski bought a truck with a wood-fired oven in 2012 and started Fired Up Pizza Truck LLC, doing pizza parties at people's homes.

“We had more work than we could possibly handle,” Zabski said.

But he was spread too thin, as he had the two other businesses to run.

He stopped the pizza parties after three years but kept the truck and the name, and used the oven to entertain friends with pizza a few times a year.

Now that he's semi-retired, Zabski has launched the school.

Zabski's vision for the pizza school is this: hosts invite guests and, after hearing a brief history of pizza, each will make their own New Haven-style pie. He will supply the tables, equipment and ingredients, and attendees will make their own dough and sauce from his recipes.

The instruction will include making the dough, stretching it, making the sauce, assembling the pizza, launching it with the peel, turning the pizza and “how to read” the cheese and the char, the latter referring to blackness around the edges.

(The peel is the wooden accessory used to slide pizza in and out of the oven.)

Zabski will use his oven or, if preferred by the client, their pizza oven, kitchen oven or even the grill.

The degree of involvement in the making of the pizza is up to the customer, he said.

“There are no rules except you can't have more than 10 people,” Zabski said. “Everything else goes.”

Craig Spinnato of West Haven, who follows Zabski's how-to videos on YouTube, recently called Zabski to the rescue when his new pizza oven wasn't getting results.

Spinnato said he caught a pizza on fire and burned his peel. “I couldn't make a pie to save my life,” he said. “You have to play with the heat.”

Zabski visited and installed heat shield bricks to block some of the heat and they made five pies – two white, three red. Zabski also taught Spinnato how to stretch out the dough and slide it off the peel.

“He was very knowledgeable. He also knows the history of pizza,” Spinnato said. “It tasted amazing.”

Zabski has several price options at the new school, including $1,250 for small parties at people's houses for up to 10; one-on-one training at $125 per hour that includes immediate family members; and three-hour classes at $125 per person, at a location to be determined.

For more information, contact Zabski at polishpiz@pizzagavones.com.

Contributed photo Frank Zabski with a finished New Haven-style pie outside his pizza truck.

Contributed photo Frank Zabski of Milford is ready to travel in his pizza truck and teach people how to make New Haven-style pizza.