$7 to $10 for a pizza? Too much!

My approach to pizza is intended to be
good on cost, preparation time, flavor,
and nutrition and in my view is terrific
on all four.

Table of Contents

=== Steps Forward
=== Making the Pizza Dough
== Equipment
= Stainless Steel Bowls
= Other Equipment
== The Water and Yeast
== The Flour
== Mixing in the Salt and Flour
== Dough Kneading
== Dough Rising
== Eight Pieces
=== Tomato Sauce
=== Making a Pizza
== A Teflon Circle
== Forming the Pizza
== The Toppings
== Cooking
== Slicing

=== Steps Forward

For my success and my situation, here are
five steps forward:

First, I make the pizza at home and, thus,
cut out some time delays and lots of
costs.

Second, I make my own dough. Key here are
the simple, bold, blunt facts (a) pizza
dough is just bread dough, actually
especially simple bread dough, and (b)
making pizza dough is fast, fun, and
easy.

Third, to cook the pizza, I use just a
covered cast iron frying pan on a stove
top so save on heating a whole oven.

Fourth, my pizza is for one, about 7 1/4"
in diameter. For larger pizzas, nearly
all of the content here can still apply.

Fifth, I settle on one pizza with just the
same ingredients and then buy the
ingredients in bulk quantities at Sam's
Club. The ingredients for one pizza cost
about $1. All the ingredients can be
stored, depending on the ingredient, at room
temperature, in a refrigerator, or in a
freezer, and be fine for months.

=== Making the Pizza Dough

The usual short version of pizza dough is
flour, yeast, salt, and water, and so is
my pizza dough.

For flour, I get the 25 pound bags of
bread and pizza flour from Sam's Club.

For yeast, I use

Fleischmann's Instant Dry Yeast.

My last purchase was from Amazon, 2
pounds, as one purchase, in two packages,
each one pound. The yeast comes as loose,
small granules. After opening a package,
I cover and refrigerate the rest.

== Equipment

= Stainless Steel Bowls

I use two stainless steel bowls. I
believe the bowls, at least the larger
one, are now sold at Walmart.

The larger bowl has at its top outside
diameter 12 1/4" and inside diameter 11
1/8". The inside depth is 6 1/2"

The smaller bowl has top outside diameter
11 1/2" and inside diameter 10 1/2". The
inside depth is depth 3 1/2"

= Other Equipment

1 T (tablespoon) measuring spoon

large wire whip

large cooking spoon

spatula

pastry board (white plastic, 20" x 15")

chef's knife

a second supply of flour, not large, say 1
cup or so, for dusting as helpful -- see
below.

== The Water and Yeast

Add to the larger bowl (accuracy here and
with the flour is likely important)

650 ml

water at room temperature and 1 T
(tablespoon) of the yeast. Cover and
wait, also at room temperature, an hour or
so for the water to soften the yeast (this
waiting is likely optional).

== The Flour

In the smaller bowl, using some digital
scales, add

1000 grams

of the flour.

== Mixing in the Salt and Flour

Add 1 T of ordinary table salt to the
water and yeast. (There are suggestions
that should add the flour right away or
the salt might kill the yeast.) With the
wire whip, mix the yeast and salt until
uniform in the water.

Dump into the large bowl with the water,
yeast, and salt roughly, just by eye,
2/3rds of the flour and use the wire whip
to mix to a smooth viscous cream. Here
are trying to get the ingredients as
uniform as can while there is still little
enough flour in the mixture to have the
mixing, with just the wire whip, easy.
Really, if want, can just keep adding the
flour and mixing with the wire whip until
the mixture is too stiff (viscous) to mix
with the wire whip. If add too much
flour, the wire whip can be difficult to
clean!

Then dump the remaining 1/3rd or so of the
flour into the large bowl and mix with the
large cooking spoon.

== Dough Kneading

To be uniform, the dough needs more
mixing, kneading. There are claims that
this "develops the gluten". My experience
is that apparently all or nearly all that
is important is just the mixing.

So, add about 1 T of flour to the pastry
board and scatter the flour.

Dump, scrape the dough from its bowl onto the
pastry board.

Set this large bowl aside but don't bother
to clean it yet; will use the bowl again.

Even if measure the water accurately at
650 ml and the flour accurately at 1000
grams, there is some question how dry the
dough will be at this point in the work.

The idea of kneading is (a) to press and
spread the dough to increase the area of
the board it covers, (b) to fold the
dough so that the wetter parts are inside
and the dryer parts are outside, and then
to
return to (a).

The spatula can be useful for moving loose
flour/dough to the main mass where can
fold it into the main mass with the
kneading.

When starting this kneading, if there is
no relatively dry surface and the dough
sticks a lot to your fingers, then dust
the outside with about 1/2 T of flour.

Should not have much trouble with the
dough sticking to your fingers. If the
dough is too sticky, then it can take
surprisingly little extra flour, maybe
just 1/2 T, to make the dough sticking not
a problem.

Kneading for 8 minutes is likely longer
than necessary.

How to know there is enough kneading? All
of (a) -- (c) just below are sufficient
and quite doable:

(a) The dough looks about as well mixed
and uniform as it will get.

(b) If press with a finger, the dough
springs back some.

(c) The outside looks smooth, no longer
like the irregular, sticky mass that
started on the board.

== Dough Rising

You want the yeast to grow and generate
flavor but especially CO2 to make the
dough and the pizza puffy.

So, put the mass of dough back in the
large bowl, cover the bowl (not in contact
with the dough) with a towel or other
means to keep out air, and let the dough
rest at room temperature for several hours
until it is, say, within 1" of the top of
the bowl.

Just exactly how long you let the dough
rise is not critical: You just want the
yeast to generate some small bubbles of
CO2. With a lot of rising, will tend to
get some large bubbles and more volume,
but the next step in the dough handling
will pop the large bubbles which means
that they were not very useful.

If you let the dough rise too long, then
the top can dry out.

== Eight Pieces

From this one recipe of dough, I get 8
pizzas, each about 7 1/4" in diameter.
But, if want to make larger pizzas, then
divide the dough into 6, 4, or maybe 2
pieces!

Put 1 T of flour on the pastry board, dump
the dough onto the flour, and roll the
dough around in the flour.

At this point I squeeze and stretch the
dough to make a roughly uniform log the
diagonal length of the cutting board.
Then using a chef's knife, I cut the log
into 2, then 4, then 8 roughly equal
pieces.

I put each piece in a covered plastic
container of volume about 12 ounces. For
dough I want to eat as pizzas in the next
day or two, I put the containers in the
refrigerator. For the rest, I freeze
them.

The freezing works well for keeping the
dough.

The dough not frozen can continue to rise
and need a container larger than 12
ounces.

=== Tomato Sauce

The tomato sauce used can be quite simple
and still yield a good pizza. Here is a
relatively complicated sauce I improvised
from the standard flavorings that I
believe also makes a good pizza:

2 6 ounce cans of tomato paste

one 105 ounce can of Sam's Club Maker's
Mark crushed tomatoes

3 T garlic from Walmart bottled, diced
garlic

2 T Tone's dry oregano

2 T Tone's dry basil

Combine in 6 quart pot. Mix. Simmer to
sterilize and reduce a little. Put about
a quart in the refrigerator to use for
pizzas soon and freeze the rest.

=== Making a Pizza

== A Teflon Circle

My use of a covered cast iron skillet as
an oven can burn the bottom of the pizza
before the rest is hot. So, to protect
the bottom, I make the pizza on a sheet of
Teflon. I get the Teflon as "Dehydrator
Sheets" 14 x 14" from Amazon. So far,
after hundreds of pizzas, I am still using
the first, same sheet of Teflon! I cut the
sheet to a circle 8 1/4" in diameter.

== Forming the Pizza

With a piece of thawed dough, 1/8th of the
whole recipe, weighing about

(1000 + 650) / 8 = 206.250 grams

press the dough into a circle about 7 1/4"
in diameter on the Teflon circle.

== The Toppings

I add about

48 grams tomato sauce,

43 grams of (still frozen) shredded
Mozzarella cheese (from Sam's),

23 grams (four circles) of pepperoni
sausage (relatively large circles, already
sliced, from Sam's).

The toppings and their amounts can vary
enormously. Commonly the US uses way more
in sauce, cheese, and other toppings than,
say, some famous places in Italy and
needed for a good pizza.

== Cooking

I cook the pizza in a covered cast iron
frying pan with bottom cooking circle 8
1/2" in diameter for 22 minutes (with the
frying pan starting at room temperature).
I use a large burner on an electric stove,
and, on that stove, have the power dial at
about 8 o'clock -- for another stove, you
may have to experiment.

This cooking results in the bottom crisp
and nicely brown and the rest nicely hot
without boiling the Mozzarella cheese.

== Slicing

To eat, using the chef's knife, I cut the
pizza in just two pieces.