Home Made Pizza

As part of my challenge we are making a lot of things from scratch.  Every Friday we make Pizza.  I have an awesome dough recipe that I got from my friend Denine about 8 years ago.  I have refined it to make it my own, but it is similar to the recipe that she gave me.  I also use my Kitchen Aid mixer to make it instead of hand kneading.

This is a simple recipe and takes me about 5 minutes to make in my Kitchen Aid, before I go through making my dough, I have to give you some Frugal tips on making pizza.

1.  Buy your flour in bulk.  I buy my flour most of the time at Sam's Club for $5.79.  This is a 25lb. bag, which makes your flour $.23 lb.  I did get a deal at Target a while back for $1.50 for a 10 lb. bag, or $.15 lb.  They were all out, so I got a raincheck and stocked up when it was back in stock!
2.  Buy your yeast at Sam's Club/Costco.  I buy a 2 pack at Sam's.  They are 16 oz. each, and cost $4.16, or $.13 an ounce.  It lasts me a long time and I store it in the fridge. 
3.  Watch for cheese sales.  I have picked up Sargento cheese for FREE by watching their sales/coupons.  If I can't pick up cheese on sale or with coupons I will buy Sam's Club Cheese for $10.13 for a 5lb brick.  This makes it $2.02 lb.  When cheese isn't on sale at the Grocery Stores, this is a better price...generally.
4.  Make your own sauce.  I either make a huge batch, or just mix up a can of tomato sauce.  I just add the ingredients that I like, and I don't measure.  Makes for a different tasting pizza every week.
5.  Limit the meat you put on top.  My hubby is a vegetarian and I am okay with not having meat on my pizza.  We make just cheese pizza with fresh basil (you can grow your own) or add peppers, olives, onions, and tomatoes.

Your take out pizza will cost you a lot more than making one at home, and I believe it tastes better!  We love this crust so much that sometimes I will make the crust thick just so we can dip it in honey!  You can make cheese bread, bread sticks, cinnamon bread, etc.

Here is my step by step on my dough making:

 

Ingredients:

1-1/2 Cups of warm water (I just test it with my finger)

3 tsp. Yeast

1 tsp. Sugar

2 tsp. Sea Salt or regular

2 tblsp. Olive Oil

4ish Cups of Flour

Pour the water into the bowl and add the yeast.

Let dissolve about 5 minutes

Add sugar and 1 cup of flour

Mix

Add another cup of flour and the salt and Olive Oil

 Mix

Add the rest of the flour slowly and Mix until combined.

I then switch to my dough hook.  If find it takes less time to mix it all with the paddle and then switch to the hook.

Then knead for two minutes.  Kneading in your kitchen aid for two minutes is equal to 12 minutes of hand kneading.  Don't over do this as I found out that it can damage your mixer and I had to have mine replaced.

Here is the final product ready to rise.

Cover and let rise.  You can make this in the morning and let it rise all day, or in the evening and let rise for 30 minutes.  Today I wanted to get it out of the way.

Bake at 500 on the lower rack for 3-5 minutes

Then move the pizza to a middle rack for another 3-5 minutes.

Here are the results:

 Our first pizza turned out Great!  The second one, I dropped in the oven...yeah, I didn't get a picture of that.  LOL!  They were both yummy!