Recipe Idea: Home made pizza
Having the most frugal grocery budget in the world isn’t going to help you any if you can’t put together at least a few healthy, tasty, and cheap eats! Every month, The Outlier Model features a cheap recipe idea, along with the cost breakdown.
Pizza is the ultimate comfort food. Ever since I was a kid, my Mom used to make pizza on Friday nights, with a home-made crust from the bread maker. Fast forward a few years, take away the bread maker and insert a hankering for some ‘za! Making your own crust is actually just like making most other pastries or bread. Not difficult, just requires some forethought and planning. I often make the dough ahead of time, flatten it out on the pan and throw it in the freezer for later in the week.
Pizza is easily customizable, so feel free to mix up the toppings to create your ideal dish.
Dough
- 3 3/4 cups flour ($0.12 a cup based on ~40 cups per 11lb bag at $4.99)
- 2 Tbsp. yeast ($0.60)
- 2 tsp. salt (< $0.05)
- 1 Tbsp. honey ($0.25)
- 1-2 Tbsp. olive oil ($0.10)
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 cup water (separate portion)
- 1-2 Tbsp. oregano (free!)
Sauce and toppings
- 1 can tomato paste ($0.55)
- 1 Tbsp. oregano (free!)
- 300g (1 block) mozzarella cheese ($4)
- Sliced sausage meat ($0.83)
- 1 – 2 cubed red or green peppers ($0.50)
- 1/3 can black olives ($0.35)
Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water and let stand for 3 minutes. Mix the flour, salt and spices together. Pour the yeast mixture, the rest of the water, honey and olive oil into the center of the flour and mix to dough. Knead for 15 minutes until dough becomes smooth and elastic. Once I achieve dough consistence, I like to put some flour on the counter and transfer it to the counter to knead properly.
If your dough mixture is too sticky, add a bit more flour until you get the right consistency. Divide the dough into two round, equal pieces - this recipe makes TWO pizzas! Sprinkle a baking sheet with flour and transfer the rolls to it. Cover the baking sheets, place it in a warm spot and come back an hour and a half later.
When you return, punch the dough down and roll it out into as thin or thick a crust as you desire. This recipe works best with thin crusts and the flour on the baking sheet helps get that nice crisp crust.
Now comes the fun part! To make the pizza sauce, empty one can of tomato paste and the oregano into a bowl. Mix the spice into the paste and add approximately 2-3 Tbsp. of water to get a nice sauce-y consistency. CF likes to add the cheese at this point, which goes against my years of pizza making experience, but she’s got a point. Adding the cheese at this point lets all the ingredients added after get crispy and flavorful. Proceed to add as many or as few toppings as you like. I noted the toppings that we used, but you can really improvise here as much as you want.
Heat the oven to 375 degrees and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let the finished pizza rest for 5-10 minutes before cutting and serving.
Slices: 12 large slices
Cost per slice: $0.63
Frugal hack: Use ingredients from your garden – we used oregano from our herb planter and a banana pepper from our community garden.
Feeling adventurous? Add some spice! We added a banana pepper from the garden and a jalapeno pepper for good measure. It’s got kick!
This post also appeared at Life as Mom, in Frugal Friday – Just Say No
22 Responses to “Recipe Idea: Home made pizza”
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What a great recipe! I post recipes too so I LOVE finding another PF blogger who does the same. I’d probably have held the meat to save a bit of money (and because we’re going semi-vegetarian).
Thanks for the crust recipe…I’ve never made it by myself before!
Food/Grocery is one of the biggest areas where people spend money – I’m surprised more people don’t spend time writing about it!
Heyyy you forgot the ham and pineapple!
I think you could swap the sausage for ham and pineapple and still come out about the same cost per slice. Customize away!
The pizza looks yummy! I make my own pizza too and love trying new ingredients from whatever I have around. A plain cheese and tomato is good too.
That pizza looks amazing. I’ve always wanted to try my own dough but it seemed so difficult. But it doesn’t seem so bad, just needs planning like you said! I will have to try this recipe out.
Gillian, you can make a nice quick dough in about 10mins (no yeast) and then pan fry. That can then just have toppings added and stuck under the broiler for a few mins to melt the cheese. Obviously the ultimate pizza experience takes time but it’s a versatile meal…. I have a quick dough recipe here: http://frugalzeitgeist.com/the-ultimate-frugal-staple-quick-flat-bread/
.. Sorry for self promoing Brian, just keen to get everyone cooking for themselves!
No problem – I encourage community exchanges
Weird I didn’t get notified about this post in my rss reader. Maybe because I had already read it when you accidentally posted it earlier
I used to make my own pizza all the time, but I’ve never tried making my own dough. Plus I always made the mistake of using too many juicy toppings that made the crust too soggy.
Pre-cooking soggy ingredients helps a load!
Good tip Forest. Makes sense to cook a lot of the juices out or seal them in. It was always such a shame because I use a pizza cooking stone which makes the bottom of the crust nice and crispy, but then all juices make the rest soggy. I’m totally gonna make pizza with the mozzarella I have in the fridge.
We had the same issue – good motivation not to post anything by accident again!
We love homemade pizza. We have found a couple good recipes for grilling on the BBQ in the summer. We love it and we like how we save heating up the house. I think what I like most about homemade pizza is that you can put whatever toppings you want on it.
That looks pretty tasty. And cheap to make too. It’s nice that both members in the household know how to cook. For lazy people like myself I sometimes buy refrigerated plain pepperoni pizza and add extra toppings like mushrooms, green pepper, and bacon. Then bake the whole thing together :0)
A perfectly legitimate hack
We used to do the same thing using the cheap Superstore pizzas.
Love it when they get the magical 50% off stickers! They’re pretty darn good on their own.
(I assume you mean the fresh ones by the deli)
My family loves making homemade pizza too! I even fantasize about someday opening my own pizza restaurant (lol)! Thanks for sharing this recipe! My biggest problem has always been the yeast. I can never seem to get a consistent “rise” out of the dough…I want to buy the economy sized yeast packages (instead of the expensive individual ones) but I’m afraid the yeast will go bad (or be bad when I buy it) and I’ll be stuck with it…
I just keep a jar in the fridge and I’ve never had any problems. It might be labeled breadmaker or something, I don’t know. I just buy the same one every time.
That said, I never measure, I usually make bread by sight/feel, so I can’t really comment on consistency! (No, I haven’t mastered consistency, just laziness, haha)
Might be due to the temperature you’re letting the yeast rise at! You should find a warm, draft-free place in your home to let it rise. Mine is the closet near the hot water tank.
Mmmmm, pizza.
We were at a restaurant on the weekend and I took a picture of part of the menu – spicy thai chicken pizza! You can bet it’s going to happen soon. We love making homemade pizza. Depending on the toppings, it can be delicious and affordable.
(We ordered the daily special instead.)
Plus, even when it’s a bit more expensive, I feel good knowing that there isn’t anything funky in the ingredients. No preservatives, not too much salt, etc.
I think my home-made pizzas are a little more costly. The cheapest one I made was the one I made last night. Probably only cost me $15 or so for the cost of ingredients.
I think the most expensive one I ever made was about $25.
Then again, I’m using Italian “00″ flour, buffalo or fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, or bacon, roast chicken, red peppers, olives, portabello mushrooms, and some parmigiano regianno on top. Also, I’m guessing food prices are about double where I live.