I will never spend $20 on takeout pizza again! It is so easy to make your own pizza at home. This post doesn’t actually constitute a recipe, but I want to mention it anyway. Almost every grocery store now carries fresh pizza dough balls wrapped in plastic and ready for you to bring home and cook and they generally cost less that $2. Our local grocery store, Harris Teeter, carries white and wheat pizza dough, and Earth Fare carries gluten free pizza dough in addition to traditional white and wheat dough. The dough is usually good for about 2 to 3 days in your fridge. When you are ready to use it, flour your surface and flour the dough. Using very clean hands with a little flour on them, shape the dough into a disc and then roll it out into a larger circle. Using your hands stretch the dough as evenly as you can until it is the size of the pan you will be cooking it on.
We cook all of our pizza – fresh and frozen – on a pizza crisper. It has air holes in it that allows air to circulate and I think it really makes the best pizza crust. We got one as a housewarming gift and it has completely changed my relationship with pizza. It truly improves the taste and texture of gluten free rice crusts and cornmeal crusts. You can get one for $15.95 at Crate and Barrel.
For our pizza, each child could choose the toppings for one quarter of the pizza. We decided to brush half the pizza with olive oil and put red sauce (spaghetti sauce) on the other half. We then sprinkled mozzarella cheese over the entire pizza. On one of the olive oil quarters I used leftover Buffalo Chicken Dip to make a buffalo chicken pizza. Wow! It was fantastic. One the tomato side we were a little more traditional – half pepperoni and half cheese.
Cook your pizza for about 15 to 20 minutes in a preheated 425 degree oven. Using a pizza wheel, we cut our pizza into 16 skinny slices and served it with fresh canteloupe! What an easy and inexpensive meal. Enjoy!
