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| Gimme Pizza! P-I-Z-Z-A! |
We've been making pizza at home for a while. Actually, it's more my boyfriend's forte than mine as he used to work for one of those brick oven pizza places where he actually had to chop wood for the fire. We usually buy Trader Joe's premade dough that comes in a little baggy because it's priced at 99 cents which seems really cheap. However, being the sleuth that I am, I was curious how much better it would be if we made pizza dough at home and how much money would we save.
My mom gave me a breadmaker when I was in college about 10 years ago, and I have to admit it collects a lot of dust. However, I recently decided that I should really start using it more often - especially the dough setting where it does the annoying part of kneading and rising for you and you can go ahead and shape the dough into whatever shape you need it. I got it out, dusted it off and put it to work. It has a pizza dough setting that takes about an hour from start to finish. I used this recipe.
I also usually buy the Trader Joe's pizza sauce in a jar which I believe retails for $1.49 and you can top about 3 or 4 pizzas out of one jar. This time around, I decided to make my own fresh sauce which is more versatile because we can use it for pasta as well. Well, it was fresh as a can of crushed tomatoes. I also followed Mark Bittman's recipe for Easy Tomato Sauce. I really like how bossy Mark Bittman is. It really gets through to me. He says it's too easy to not make tomato sauce yourself. I agree. I got it from the cookbook, but you can find it here. We had some leftover sausage from the country benedicts, a package of ALDI pepperoni, and half of a green pepper. The Italian blend of shredded cheese also came from ALDI.
This pizza was cheaper than Little Caesar's and didn't leave us with feelings of regret.
Here's the breakdown:Pizza Dough
7/8 cup of warm water // 7 oz @ $0 cause I don't pay for water!
3/4 teaspoon Morton’s Kosher salt // 0.17 oz @ $0.06/oz = $0.01
2 tablespoons TJ’s EV olive oil // 1 oz @ $0.18/oz = $0.18
2 1/2 cups ALDI all-purpose flour // 11 oz @ $0.02/oz = $0.22
2 teaspoons Red Star Yeast // .33 oz @ $1.75/oz = $0.58 (appx cost)
2 teaspoons ALDI white sugar // 0.29 oz @ $0.03/oz = $0.01
TOTAL for dough: $1.00
Toppings
ALDI Pepperoni // 1.1 oz @ $0.25/oz = $0.28
ALDI Sausage // 3.3 oz @ $0.13/oz = $0.43
HarvesTime Green Pepper // 2.15 oz @ $0.08/oz = $0.17
Cheese // 5.70 oz @ $0.21 oz = $1.20
1 tablespoon olive oil // 0.5 oz @ $0.18 /oz = $0.09
TOTAL for toppings: $2.16
Pizza Sauce
1 ALDI yellow onion // 6.55 oz @ $0.05/oz = $0.33
1 can ALDI crushed tomatoes // 28 oz @ $0.03/oz = $0.84
3 tablespoons TJ’s EV olive oil // 1.50 oz @ $0.18/oz = $0.27
1 teaspoon of ALDI jarred minced garlic // 0.17oz @ $0.15/oz = $0.03
¼ cup portion used on pizza - $0.08
TOTAL for entire pizza: $3.24 including tax
It's so cheap it makes me want to cry. Also, we both feel ashamed for using Trader Joe's premade crust for pizza parties at our house as this crust is far softer and chewier and satisfying. However, it is surprisingly the same price - yeast is really pricey.
You should check out 5dollardinners.com. I get a lot of good ideas from that site.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you don't need a bread maker to make a good dough. I make all of the bread in our house, from sandwich bread to hamburger buns and I do it all without power. I make it daily, or every other day, but you could follow the dough recommendations from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. They even have a "no knead" recipe for bread dough that I hear is really good.
In fact, using a bread machine is not worth the electricity it takes to run it. Have you thought about adding electricity and natural gas to your Life Per Unit calculations? There is a good book called The Green Kitchen that talks about the most energy efficient appliances and techniques for cooking.
That is an excellent point!
ReplyDeleteI actually have thought about about calculating the cost of energy usage. I live in an apartment that is all utilities inclusive. One of these days, I might ask my landlady to pull out her bill to let me know the costs per energy unit used. I did some google searching, and I think ComEd in Chicago charges 10 cents per kilowatt hour. My machine is 600W.
600W x 1 hr for dough cycle = 600 watt-hours
divided by 1000 = .6 kWh x $0.10/hr = $0.06
I definitely want to try making bread by hand, we've just had kind of bad results in the past. So, I guess we were looking at it from the perspective of a nickel extra for the dough to not entirely go to waste!
My head is spinning trying to figure out the cost of running the gas stove, so any tips on that would be appreciated. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to buying an energy meter to calculate energy use when I have an extra $25 lying around.
Hmm.. you could call the gas company and ask if they know how much gas the average stove uses per minute maybe. Heck, maybe someone out there on the interwebs has already figured that out?
ReplyDeleteBread dough is all trial and error. Just remember that it's supposed to be a little sticky and not like play dough.
Oh, and I'm sorry for the multiple comments, but I just had another thought: the answer to the expensive yeast problem is sourdough. I had some luck with a started this year, but lost it when we had to move out of our house unexpectedly for 3 months.
ReplyDeleteOr, you can make dough with up to 12 cups of flour with one package of yeast. If you buy in bulk, that's 2 1/2 teaspoons. I make the dough and immediately separate into about 2-3 cup portions and freeze for later. It thaws beautifully and keeps in the freezer for months.
My all-purpose bread/pizza/roll recipe is:
12 cups flour
4-5 cups water (as needed) 1/2 cup for proofing yeast
salt is estimated, but about 1/2 tablespoon, can be less
2 1/2 teaspoon yeast
2 1/2 teasopoon sugar
I would also try Mark Bittman's pizza dough recipe. I started it on Saturday (punched it down once on Sunday, and shaped into rounds on Monday), and it's really good.
ReplyDelete