Pizza!

I like pizza. Okay, I love pizza, but I hate how expensive delivery pizza is. So I thought I should try and see how much better homemade pizza would be. Obviously it's much cheaper to make, but some people do like convenience enough to pay extra for it. I'm not one of those people. I'm a huge advocate for making convenience items at home as a way to save money, especially since you can also learn a lot of useful skills by making things at home, and have a lot of fun at the same time.

The dough recipe I used was out of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. Best cookbook investment I've ever made. I've yet to try a recipe from this book that wasn't wonderful. Anyway, back to the dough. This dough takes about 3 hours to make, including the rising time. It makes yields enough dough to make 3 14-in. pizzas. I just made one pizza, and put the rest of the dough in the freezer for another time. See? That's convenient, right?

This dough was very good; not very light, though. I may try out some other doughs in the future to see what I like best, but this was a good, simple dough, excellent for first-timers as well.

For the sauce, I just used canned plain spaghetti sauce and added some traditional Italian herbs to it, which you can do to your own taste. I then added some mozzarella, Parmesan, and turkey pepperoni. I know, boring... but it was very, very tasty!

Cost-wise, the ingredients used for the batch of dough which yields three pizzas would cost me under $1.00.
The toppings I used for one pizza was about $2.50. (I used 1/4 can spaghetti sauce, 1 1/2 cups mozzarella, about 2 teaspoons Parmesan, and about 1/5 package sliced turkey pepperoni).
So total I spent about $3.00 for one "medium" pizza. And making it was rather fun to do, so I saved a lot of money and had a fun project! Not bad, if I do say so myself!

Fannie Farmer Cookbook Pizza Dough

1 1/3 cups warm water (divided)
1 package dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp)
3-4 cups flour
Olive oil
2 tsps. salt
3 cups pizza sauce
3 cups grated mozzarella cheese
24 slices pepperoni

Dissolve yeast in 1/3 cup warm water and let stand for 5 minutes. Add about 2 cups of the flour, 2 Tbs oil, 1 cup warm water and the salt, and beat. Add more flour, mixing well, until the dough holds together in a rough mass. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic. Put the dough in an oiled bowl to rise, covered with plastic wrap. When the dough has doubled in bulk, about 2 hours, punch it down and divide dough into thirds. Let rest for 5 minutes. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Roll the dough with a rolling pin or stretch it over your fists until you have 3 14-inch circles. Place on pizza pans or cookie sheets and pick all over with a fork. On each circle, spoon 1 cup pizza sauce; sprinkle 1 cup mozzarella and place 8 pepperoni slices on each pizza. Drizzle each pizza with about 2 teaspoons olive oil. Let rest another 10 minutes and then bake for about 18-20 minutes, or until lightly browned. To test for doneness, lift an edge - if the bottom has turned golden, it is probably done.