Very few things please me more than a good pizza. Whether simply topped with cheese and basil or loaded with a farmer’s market full of veg, you can’t beat the universal appeal of flat bread with interesting things on top. The fact that it’s a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide tells me I’m not alone in this opinion.
The pizza business as I see it breaks down into three main categories. Local and artisan restaurants, big chain and delivery operations, and the home market. That last one is where I get worked into a frenzy. There are ‘fresh & bake’ options as well as the ubiquitous frozen cardboard discs that pass as foodstuffs found in any grocery or convenience mart you walk into on the planet. The quality does vary across all categories but even the best examples I see people load into their carts are easily beaten on taste and value measures with only a bit of skill and practice at home. Just today I saw a young couple with literally a dozen of the blasted things in their trolley. I counted. I had to go find the display on the shelves myself and the cause was clear. They were on sale for three bucks each.
I totally understand being on a food budget desperate to get something edible on the table quickly but it beggars belief that the industry has managed to get people to forget a sizable percentage of their cost goes towards packaging and shipping. A percentage that should be spent on better ingredients. For that matter fun ingredients personalized to your own tastes that the industry would never try because they either cut into profits too much or represent an unsafe bet in mass appeal.
The tired old excuse of time convenience rears its head anytime ready-made food enters the debate but that’s rubbish I say. And I mean to prove it. Here’s my challenge – to make a pizza the way manufacturers do for less than half of even sale prices at home and show what you’re really getting in those cardboard boxes. And then, go one better and make pizzas properly for the same price and in the same amount of time you’d spend buying or ordering ready made. Either pay a cheaper price for what you *are* eating or eat much better for the same price. The choice is yours but option three of sticking with frozen boxes should make you ashamed to call yourself a pizza lover. Think ahead, practice a bit, and you’ll never go back.
A few ground rules and disclaimers are in order. A year’s worth of pizza to me is roughly fifty pizzas. You don’t need to make quite that many if you’re not as obsessed with them as I am but for the best math I do get many of the ingredients like flour and tinned tomatoes in shelf stable bulk. Costs are real world what I manage to pay for ingredients at retail with clever shopping. Math is done according to weight. Time spent is hands-on and doesn’t include rising or cooking. The drive to the grocery store or calling the delivery is thirty minutes so I’ve got to beat that in preparation. Final assembly of a pizza with prepared dough and sauce has to come close to opening a cardboard box and heating the oven, something you’d have to do anyway, or about ten minutes in my mind. I can beat all of those measures.
As best I can tell the cheap (really cheap) frozen pizzas can be had on sale for three bucks. Dismal little pucks that are mostly frozen dough with a bit of discount cheese and sausage that weigh in around 650 grams. A ‘premium’ version with marginally better ratios will cost you around $5 for roughly 800 grams. Delivery is usually drastically better quality but is at best $12 and typically more like $16 because of tax and tip. I’ll use these for comparison and weigh instead of measuring diameters to be fair. The amount of cheese and toppings will be a bit of guesswork but I’ll make them as close as possible to the industry amounts seen on retail examples.
I have to ask for something in return and it’s this… you have to think anywhere from one to three days ahead when you want pizza to allow the dough to mature. That sounds impossible if you’re thinking “I’m hungry NOW” but easily achievable if you say after your weekly shop “I want pizza sometime in the next few days.” Rewards of flavour and cost come with this absolute minimum of planning.
Perhaps more importantly is that you have to practice. Even your first pizza will taste great but as you make more and get slices under your belt, they’ll taste even better and come together more easily. Do you hear me? Don’t give up after your first two attempts. Practice, practice, practice. If you need a recipe to print, look here for my no-cook sauce. As for dough particulars, just remember to use good yeast and salt the water at the correct ratio – one tablespoon to two cups warm water. The flour will take as much as it needs automatically to form a dough ball. You’re good up to any size dough your food processor’s motor can handle. The slow rise in the fridge levels that playing field pretty well but worst case you might need to up your local flour’s protein content by substituting a portion of strong flour (aka bread flour) into a mix with all-purpose. Even stock standard all-purpose will still make pretty good pizza but play with ratios to make it your own.
Here’s the video for the first half of my challenge. I’ll spend more on the second half and make you lot the best five dollar pizza you’ve ever had soon enough. Stay tuned.
