Make your own pizza - the Holy Grail? (1 Viewer)

[member666]

Will have to try that some time.

 

[Paul_Scott]

Wow- funny to see this thread here, as I got on a Pizza kick when I was on the road in February/March, and have been making them every few days since getting back.
It started when I bought these Cali Pizza Kitchen Microwave 5 cheese/spinich flatbread things. They were great for microwave food, but I was looking forward to getting home so I could experiment with healthier alternatives. I originally tried using flatbread wraps with a mix of warmed up Stouffers spinich souffle and cheese, onions,etc. Didn't work out as tasty as I'd hoped.
I ended up ditching the flat bread (and the spinich for the most part) and started using frozen pizza dough from the supermarket bakery. This stuff is AMAZING...and amazingly cheap. $2 /lb and I can easily get 3 generous sized personal pizzas out of it. I picked up some white sauce topping which is basically olive oil and seasoning and have been making mostly light, white pizzas with tomatos, mushrooms, olives, onions and cheese. A $2.50 pizza pan at Wal-mart was the major investment. All together each 10"-12" pizza costs about $2 to make. All these carbs aren't doing me much good, but it sure is tasty...and it's helping me keep my food budget down quite a bit.
Also the whole process of working with the dough, cutting the vegatables, loading up the pie- I find remarkably relaxing.
I'll be baking some chicken thighs this week and then using the meat for some different pizzas next week. Defintely some "Buffalo" style chicken at some point, though with the Bleu cheese (essential for 'real' Buffalo red hot style chicken, imo), it makes for an awfully rich pie.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Food preparation as therapy. One of the worst-kept secrets of the kitchen. Personally, I prefer washing dishes for relaxation.

One of my local markets has now started to carry a whole-wheat version of their refrigerated pizza doughs (comes in a small bag). But they don't have it that often. :frowning:

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Paul,

Try using the recipe linked in the original post of this thread: crust costs go down to mere pennies.

I estimate you can get 50 medium pizza crusts out of a 25 lb. bag of bread flour and a pound of yeast for around $10. That's about 20 cents each.

 

[Brad Porter]

Should I work up the math on how cheap it is from scratch?

Last time around I didn't even bother attempting any kind of tomato based sauce (since I usually just heat up diced tomatoes with sausage or mushrooms before baking the pie), and I drizzled the dough with olive oil instead. Damn! I had forgotten how simple and tasty that could be. In the future I think I'll experiment with some flavor infused oils to see how much of a difference that makes in the final product.

Brad

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I'm not going to claim anything about making my own pizza, but of those I have had the best were topped with fresh ginger and celantro. Mmmm

 

[BrianW]

Ginger! I never thought of that. That sounds really good!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Wouldn't the cilantro just burn?

 

[Mike Frezon]

We finally timed it right and were in the right supermarket tonight which happened to have some of those fresh whole-wheat doughs made up. I'll report in when we've tried 'em out!

 

[Mike Frezon]

Tried 'em out last night! Yum! It had a definite whole-wheat taste and was delicious. Loaded it up with marinara sauce, onions and turkey pepperoni. Also used low-fat mozzarella made from 2% milk. The only unfortunate thing is there was no nutritional information on the dough packaging (d'oh!)...so I don't know exactly how many calories/grams-of-fat were involved.

Dennis: Your tip of using some flour (whole wheat again) on the counter and rolling-pin worked awesome. The dough rolled out perfectly and filled our large pizza pans. Easiest I've ever done it. Color me ignorant no more.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

 

[Mike Frezon]

Now you can simply color me confused! Darth Vader? Why?

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

See post #40.

You left off the olives.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Is the memory the first or second thing to go?

I can't remember.

Mmmm. And I love black olives!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Today's bargain is from Sam's Club. A FIVE pound log of "Stella" brand part-skim mozzarella for only $7.35. That's $1.47 per pound. I would guess I put 1/3 lb on a pizza, so that's enough to make 15 pizzas or 49 cents per pizza for cheese.

 

[Mike Frezon]

That's a LOT of mozzarella!

Will it keep until you make 15 pizzas for yourself? Or, is this your sly way of inviting me over for some pie one night to watch The Wind and the Lion?

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Well if you drop by I'll be more than happy to cook whatever you want.

But dense cheeses like mozzarella freeze really well IF you don't plan on serving them as such (e.g. as part of a Hors d'œuvre plate). Since it's going to be cooked later on, you can defrost blocks prior to use. My 5 lb block will be cut into 5 one-lb blocks and put into the freezer in ziploc bags after "burping" out all the air.

Look at the big picture - $1.47/lb for cheese. It's worth some labor on my part.

Actually it's on Sam's Club website. http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/nav...227&pCatg=2521

"Allergies: Contains: Milk."

Doh.

 

[TonyD]

this works surprisingly well.

Handi-Vac Vacuum Sealer

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

So far Sam's Club has most of the breakthrough prices that make pizza cheap.

25 lb bag bread flour - about $7.25
2 lb yeast - about $4
5 lbs pepperoni - about $11.50
5 lbs mozzarella - $7.35
1.5 lbs mushrooms - $3.76

The only thing they don't have cheap is sauce, onions, and black olives.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Around these here parts, you can pick up sweet onions (usually Vidalias) pretty cheap right now. And they stay cheap for the first half of the summer. I've purchased them by the 10 pound box.