Pizza is stupid cheap to make at home. Domino’s is currently offering Minecraft pizzas that are less than twice the size for more than twice the cost. But making it at home means no grease soaked collectable box.
Cost per person before toppings: $2.77 It is very hard to fit even a dollar worth of toppings on a pizza.
I splurged for a pizza steel, which pretty much means you’re cooking with the same tools the takeout is, so you can satisfy even very picky eaters who want it to look like the restaurant.
One thing that I’ve found really matters is making the dough well ahead of time. A lot of people say the day before, I age it in the fridge for usually 5 days, but between 3 and 11 have all worked great.
The longer it goes the less bready and more crusty it gets, but it also gets stickier which eventually becomes too much of a pita to deal with.
If I’m baking bread that week I will make enough to be pizza crust and it might age between two and 14 days. If I’m not making bread then it’s usually a day to hours ahead of time and a different recipe.
Oil your hands and/or roll the dough ball in flour. You’ll still have to wash your hands after but oil is way easier to wash off than stuck-on dough
Aged dough is the best but even 1-2 hours ahead is gonna be great. I’m parital to Adam Ragusea‘s pan pizza recipes.
Adam Ragusea
Charlie Anderson is also great.
I ended up using 12:7:1 bread flour:water:olive oil. 1.5mL fine salt and 1mL of instant yeast per 100 total grams.
So, 720g flour, 420g water, 60g olive oil + 1.5 tsp salt and 1.5 tsp yeast gives you 4 300g crusts.
That yields a crust firm enough that you can eat the whole pizza out of your hand if you want, which I usually want because then I don’t have to wash a cutting board.
Working in a pizza shop:
Dough was made the day before for tomorrow.
Dough made in the morning could be ready for the evening if it was real busy.