Pizza is stupid cheap to make at home. Domino’s is currently offering Minecraft pizzas that are less than twice the size for more than twice the cost. But making it at home means no grease soaked collectable box.
Cost per person before toppings: $2.77 It is very hard to fit even a dollar worth of toppings on a pizza.
Lol. Got carbon?
Love making pizza at home. I think I “invented” my own crust with different flours + used beer grains (make my own beer at home) and folding techniques. I’m in NY and people as me how good NY pizza is……I prefer mine. Also I get to add as much toppings as I want and I like it eXXXXtra crispy ;)
I have made my share of spent grain goods. I had to stop brewing because it just got too expensive for even basic supplies. I used to be able to make 5 gallons of pretty much any high end beer for less than a dollar a bottle. But at the same time beers started costing $12 a four pack the cost of supplies just didn’t make sense anymore.
I still keep an eye out for fermentables that are too cheap to ignore and try to squeeze a small batch wine out of it if I can. But my beer days are probably gone.
I feel ya! I quit brewing when my wife got diagnosed with Celiac. It just didn’t seem right.
I hear ya. I’ve been slowly doing it as much. At this point I get beer kits as a gift and that’s pretty much what I do now once a season. What are you go to beer recipes?
You just made my mouth water. This looks insane.
Oh, I’m there chief.
Edit: I have more
Thank you chef.
Welp, I didn’t know this thread was a thing and I made pizza last night but didn’t take photos. 😞
Posting pizza is optional. Making pizza is mandatory. You got the important part.
The topping is the expensive part
It’s not. I get 2 pounds of pepperoni for $3. That’s a lot of pizzas. Frozen corporate meatballs, smoked kielbasa, red onion, pickled banana peppers on the large jar, bacon ends and pieces at $6 for two pounds, leftover bell pepper scraps saved in the fridge, etc. I have done the math repeatedly. It is almost impossible to squeeze even a dollar worth of toppings on a pizza unless you are adding shrimp and oysters. I the only time I never managed to put more than a dollar worth of toppings on any pizza I have made an 18x13 pizza and topped it with brussel sprouts.
Pizza places make a ridiculous amount of money on toppings charging you $1.50 for an extra one that costs them 15¢ because they are buying in bulk. That’s how dominos was able to run their any toppings for one price promo this summer. Toppings are cheap.
All the real money is in the cheese. I use Walmart Great Value brand whole milk mozzarella at $3.87 a pound. Between 6 and 8 oz per pizza. Of the $2.77 I spend per pizza up to $1.93 of that is the cheese.
Wasn’t even trying, pre-frozen homemade dough and all.
Recently upgraded from steel to a proper gas oven and let me tell you the result speaks for itself
Coming over, save me a slice.
Got a bread machine for a wedding present. Wife makes bread from scratch so what would I need that for. Turns out it also makes just dough. It has made approximately one pizza crust dough a week for 32 years. No exaggeration.
I do the same and even make it a few days ahead now. Resting the dough in the refrigerator makes it even better for me.
This is my goto recipe
Pizza dough
Makes 5 x 200g balls
200ml warm water 175ml beer, at room temperature 7g (1 sachet) fast-action yeast 50ml olive oil 600g Italian “00” flour, or strong white flour 2 tsp salt Tomato sauce Your choice of toppings
Bought a pizza oven a month ago. A bit expensive, but we’re gonna break even in no time.
You can’t not include a photo of the oven itself.
It looks like you’re on the fast track to recovering your investment.
Does getting a cheap $4 unfrozen Aldi Pizza, adding grilled chicken tossed in buffalo sauce, covering it with more cheese, and cooking it in the smoker you found on the side of the road, count?
I mean…. If you go that route, you just gotta upgrade it with more toppings.
Got Costco’s 4 pepperoni pizzas for $15. Good deal there
I’m sure that’s allowed
The judges say they’ll allow it in the modified category. 👍
We doctor up pizzas all the time. Our current fav is the costco Detroit pies with more cheese, onions, olives and whatever else we have lying around.
I used to doctor pizza. I’d grab a $5 freezer cheese pizza and add my own toppings. But these days that’s almost twice as much as it costs me to make from scratch.
Agreed. Really the only time we use ever frozen is if it’s been a busy day and we failed to plan dinner.
We just got a Costco, we’ll have to check that out.
To be honest, the Aldi Pizza… Wasn’t that good. It’s the second time we’ve gotten it, the first time we were really rushed and didn’t doctor it at all, it wasn’t great.
I thought maybe doctoring it and smoking it would help, and it did, but not enough to make it worth it.
Really we should just make pizza from scratch like OP intended.
Scratch is the best way for sure, but those square Detroit pies are like crack. Very tasty…and salty!
Much appreciated 😊
Aldi fridge pizzas punch so far above their weight.
What’s wrong with the gravity at Aldi?
Last weeks pie.
I don’t follow any particular recipe for the dough. I only rough measure, don’t weigh anything. I started with a pretty standard no knead bread dough and messed with it until it worked well for pizza. 3+ day cold ferment.
Toppings are whatever I have.
I frequently use a no knead dough myself. It lasts for about 14 days in the fridge. Days 3 to 10 are the best for pizza.
I’ve been doing it for years!Yoo how did you do that crust??
I actually put remarkably little effort into it rofl. It’s 3 cups flour, 2 1/4 tsp yeast, 1 tsp sugar, (EDIT 1 cup water) 1 tsp salt, and 2 tbsp olive oil, and I only let it rise for about 5 minutes while I’m getting other stuff ready. Pizza stone in the oven set to 425F and I roll out the dough and make the pizza on a paddle using corn meal to keep it from sticking. The crust on the first one uses a crimping technique which is handy to keep everything in, but I don’t always do it. It’s easy though, you place your left index on top of the crust, then pinch a little bit with your right hand and fold it over your index finger. Put your left index on that fold, and pinch another bit over that, spin and repeat.
Yesss saving this comment lol
How much water?
NONE OBVISOULY BECAUSE I DIDN’T LIST IT (1 cup of hot tap water mixed immediately with the yeast and sugar)
I splurged for a pizza steel, which pretty much means you’re cooking with the same tools the takeout is, so you can satisfy even very picky eaters who want it to look like the restaurant.
One thing that I’ve found really matters is making the dough well ahead of time. A lot of people say the day before, I age it in the fridge for usually 5 days, but between 3 and 11 have all worked great.
The longer it goes the less bready and more crusty it gets, but it also gets stickier which eventually becomes too much of a pita to deal with.
If I’m baking bread that week I will make enough to be pizza crust and it might age between two and 14 days. If I’m not making bread then it’s usually a day to hours ahead of time and a different recipe.
it also gets stickier which eventually becomes too much of a pita to deal with
Oil your hands and/or roll the dough ball in flour. You’ll still have to wash your hands after but oil is way easier to wash off than stuck-on dough
Aged dough is the best but even 1-2 hours ahead is gonna be great. I’m parital to Adam Ragusea‘s pan pizza recipes.
Charlie Anderson is also great.
I ended up using 12:7:1 bread flour:water:olive oil. 1.5mL fine salt and 1mL of instant yeast per 100 total grams.
So, 720g flour, 420g water, 60g olive oil + 1.5 tsp salt and 1.5 tsp yeast gives you 4 300g crusts.
That yields a crust firm enough that you can eat the whole pizza out of your hand if you want, which I usually want because then I don’t have to wash a cutting board.
Working in a pizza shop:
Dough was made the day before for tomorrow.
Dough made in the morning could be ready for the evening if it was real busy.
Cut the pizza into smaller stripes and dunk them in queso.
I like where you’re going with this. But I’m over the age of 50 and I don’t need to hasten my death.
I’m approaching 40 and my thought process was, delicious but I’m going to pay for that and it’s not worth the pain lol
what is the point of living if you can’t dip it in cheese?
My insides say that sounds like pain and a lot of time in the bathroom. Though to be fair, a good quality cheese doesn’t really effect me. It’s the all oil, preservatives, who knows what, and just enough cheese to call it cheese that gets me lol.
