homemade pizza

Meal: Homemade pizza topped with cheese, meatballs, and garlic
Approximate cost: $5.60 for a 16 inch pizza
Leftovers: 3 slices (each 1/8 of the pizza), which will make lunch today for the two of us
Actual hands-on time: 30 minutes
Total time needed: About 2.5 hours (depending on your bread machine)

I’ll admit, I was too much of a wimp to make homemade pizza until the advent of the bread machine in our lives. However, homemade pizza is now just about easier than anything else, and it’s certainly cheaper than ordering pizza (what does a 16 inch 2-topping delivered cost these days, anyhow? And with tip added on?) I’m told that pizza dough from scratch without the machine isn’t that hard, and maybe I’ll give it a try sometime soon just to see. However, most of the advantage of the bread machine for us is that there isn’t a spot warm enough in our kitchen to rise dough in any reasonable length of time. There’s a trick you can use where you warm the oven for a bit and then let dough rise in it, but I’ve not had much luck with that. The bread machine makes turning out consistent bread, roll, and pizza dough much easier.

The dough recipe we use comes from America’s Best Bread Machine Baking Recipes.

• 1 cup warm water
  
• 3 cups bread flour
  
• 1 tbs sugar
  
• 1 tsp salt
  
• 1-1/4 tsp yeast (Note: Most bread machine recipes call for “bread machine yeast”, which is supposed to be faster acting than regular yeast. However, I’ve been successfully using normal yeast in our bread machine recipes, and since we buy it in bulk, it’s much cheaper than “bread machine yeast.”).
  

Add ingredients to your bread machine pan in the order specified by your manual, and run on the dough cycle.

When the dough is done (the dough cycle on our machine is 1-1/2 hours), preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, pull the dough out of pan and let it rest, covered on a plate. When the oven is preheated (or after about 10 minutes, whichever is longer), mush the dough out into your pizza pan or pans, stone, or whatever you care to use. This dough recipe makes a thickish crust (about the kind of crust you would expect if you ordered “hand tossed” at a take-out place) for a 16 inch pizza, so it would easily make two smaller ones, or even more individual ones, if you have topping disagreement in your house.

Once the dough is in the pan, pre-bake it in the oven (just the dough - no toppings at this point) for 10-12 minutes (depending on how brown you like your crust and the size of your pan or pans.) If you skip this step, you will end up with soggy pizza crust. Trust me.

While the crust is baking, prepare your toppings. We generally just do cheese, but last night we used leftover sauce from the spaghetti, complete with meatballs. I pulled out the meatballs and chopped them up into small bits. I also chopped up several cloves of garlic and shredded up about 7 ounces total of cheese. We like our pizza cheese heavy, which adds to the cost; if you’re trying to make a cheaper pizza, go heavy on the vegetables and add just a scattering of cheese, or none at all. Top different halves or quarters of the pizza in different ways to suit different people. The great thing about making pizza at home is that you can get exactly what you want.

When the crust is done baking, top the pizza with whatever you want, then put the whole thing back in the oven for about another 15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and starting to brown. Leftovers keep well in the refrigerator for a few days.