We’ve decided to change how we prepare pizza in our house. Shocking I know. For many years now, Sunday has been pizza night where I take out a frozen pizza, add some toppings and then heat it. Yeah, boring, but still tasty. It used to be a cheap meal, but these days even a cheap frozen pizza can be $10 or more. Heather and I have also been inspired by a show we just finished watching on Netflix.
The show was Chef’s Table: Pizza. Interesting stuff. The show focused on six chefs who’s passion turned out to be making pizza. We’re not talking pepperoni here. We’re talking about all kinds of fancy and yummy gourmet pizza with farm fresh ingredients. One thing I found interesting is how many of these chefs started with a basic pizza and as they explored making pizza, they found the stuff they put on the pizza to be all important. Many started going to the farms supplying their toppings and a few even started working with flour mills to get the perfect blend and grind of flour.
A sad fact about our current food supply is that with all the food science and industrial processing of food we’re actually losing nutrition and even good tastes. The food industry is geared to make food cheap, not necessarily healthy for us. I’ve seen it in the grocery stores – a bag of sugar labeled as, “gluten free”. As if “gluten free” was a magic word making the food healthy even though it contains enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma. It’s scary to me to read a label on a food product and find it’s more chemical names than plant names.
So, we’ve decided to experiment with making pizza from real food – you know stuff that grows in the ground and the only processing down is loading on a truck to drive to us. Not all the things we have in the house fit that, but you have to start somewhere.
Our first problem is making the dough. I haven’t made bread since I was a teen in a school cooking class. Heather made a pizza dough last week that was nice. She’s also experimenting with making her own sourdough starter. But this week it’s my turn to try and make pizza dough.
This might also change how I write these pizza posts. The dough has to rise for an hour before it can be shaped into a nice round blank pizza so that means I have more time to wait and write. Likely that means I’ll write less.
But that’s a subject for another time as it’s about time for me to see how the pizza dough is doing.
Here’s how the experiment works out:
And it tasted delicious.
Andrew's View of the Week 
I just noticed the frozen pizzas in our gourmet market the other day – closer to $20 – but made with healthy ingredients. You get what you pay for (and with cheap food, I suppose you eventually “pay” for what you get). Props to you for including black olives on yours. Most consumers, my wife included, x-nay them as quickly as anchovies on Caesar salad!
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Also, thanks for the reminder about “Chef’s Table: Pizza”. We only watched the first episode (the location was in Arizona, I believe) and I’m glad to hear the rest is worth watching. Makes me wonder if there will be other series called “Chef’s Table: [insert food]”
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They’re already doing that. There’s on on BBQ I think and we just watch a French chef one this week. Soon I expect we’ll get, “Chef’s Table: The dishwasher”.
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It is getting expensive and yes there are two costs there.
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I just discovered your blog and I was pleasantly surprised to see your topic was pizza. I began making my own pizza dough about 10 years ago. Between the cost of take-out and the tasteless frozen pizzas I began my adventure. Through my research I found a dough recipe by famed Italian chef, Lidia Bastianich that is risen in the refrigerator for increased flavor. In Italy the dough is the star of the show so to speak. Making pizza has become an enjoyable way to spend time. I make individual pizzas since it’s just for me so they’re baked in my cast iron skillet. Every topping ingredient is chosen based on what I feel like eating. I’ve made barbecue chicken, buffalo chicken, Italian sausage
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I love pizza!
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Your pizza looks delicious! We make our own pizza and my favorites are veggie. As long as there’s good crust, I’m in! I often make it with my leftover sourdough starter. When I can’t manage that, though, we have a wonderful Italian market nearby and they always have pizza dough ready to go. You’ve made me hungry, Andrew!
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I was delicious. We’re going to make another one this weekend.
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That looks very good and much more satisfying.
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It was good!
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Way to go Andrew, making them yourself is the best and tastiest.
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It was very tasty. yum. 🙂
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Your pizza came out great. I LOVED that Netflix show too. Lately a lot of people are making their own pizza dough and sour dough bread. It seems easy, like any recipe, once we know what we are doing, we do it quickly, right.
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It seems complicated until you try and then you realize, “I can do that.”
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EXACTLY! I’ve always felt intimidated by “yeast.” Turns out it’s not that hard to work with.
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Mmmm, your pizza looks delicious! Interesting that your crust dough needs to rise for an hour – mine doesn’t. (I’m too impatient for that!) I just mix up the dough, put it on the pans, and start adding toppings. By the time I’ve got the pizzas assembled, the crust has risen a bit already, and it completes the process as it bakes. Even Hubby’s super-thick-crust pizza gets nice and fluffy. If you want my recipe, just let me know. :-)
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I just picked a random recipe off the internet. It used yeast and said to let it rise before shaping. I just took that time to go write something. I’d love to see your recipe.
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This recipe makes 2 – 13″ pizza crusts. If you only want one crust, you can freeze the second one, either baked or unbaked.
Mix together:
1 3/4 cups warm water
2 tsp sugar
Sprinkle 1 tbsp of dry yeast over top. (Doesn’t matter whether it’s fast-rise or traditional yeast.) Let stand a few minutes until yeast is softened and starts bubbling to the top.
Add 2 tbsp of oil and stir.
Mix together 3 1/2 cups flour and 1 tsp. salt, then add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients (or vice versa).
Stir/knead until the dough is uniform. (If you knead/stir for more than a minute or two, the crust will get tougher and more elastic. I prefer a tender crust, so I gently stir/knead just long enough to get the dough to hold together with no dry spots remaining.)
Divide dough 1/3 – 2/3 if you want one thin and one thick crust, or divide in half for two medium crusts.
Oil the countertop and put one dough ball on it. Press dough evenly outward from the centre until the crust is the size/thickness you want. Transfer (oiled side down) to a greased pizza pan and reshape the crust in the pan. (If you have a non-stick pan, you can press the dough directly into the pan without using the oiled countertop, but I find sometimes the crust sticks when it’s pressed directly into the pan.) Repeat for the second dough ball.
Layer on the toppings and bake using convection setting at 425°F, approximately 25 minutes or until done the way you want. (Some people bake it at higher temps up to 500°F to get that smoky (read ‘burnt’ flavour), but we don’t like it that way.)
Note: If you have a good convection oven, you should be fine just baking the pizzas until they’re done. We have a crappy oven, so when we’re baking both pizzas at the same time, we put them on the racks one above the other, and then switch them top to bottom halfway through baking so they cook evenly.
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Thanks! I’ll give that a try.
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Thank you for taking the time to include this recipe, Diane. I’m going to give it a try.
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I used to make pizza from scratch all the time–to save money. It’s not too hard once you get used to it, but does take time. Yours looks pretty tasty, Andrew.
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It didn’t take as much time as I thought it. I’ll be making more.
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Andrew, this looks wonderful! For years when my son was younger I made pizza from scratch every Friday … then slowly started buying the pizza dough before stopping altogether. Your post has inspired to try making my own once again! Thank you!
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I almost bought dough from the store, but I decided to just try making it. It wasn’t difficult, but if I was pressed for time, it’s nice to know I could buy it.
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I have been making lots of types of breads and rolls over the past couple of years. Moreso than I had done so in probably my entire adulthood. I have a Kitchenaide stand mixer and it is so easy that way that it borders on ‘laziness’ for me. I can probably do a basic pizza/breadstick dough in my sleep.
That opens up an entire world of toppings and experimenting. I go through and see what we have available in the refrigerator in the form of ‘bits and pieces’ of leftover food and go from there. It is fun and satisfying to strike on a good combination of cheese, vegetables, meat (or not!) and some type of sauce. Not to mention using herbs and spices to change things up.
I have never been one to favor convenience foods. To be honest – we were too poor to afford them, as they are more costly than making things from scratch. I look at it as one of the advantages of my childhood. And I can’t help but feel that my good health at 62 years old is at least in part because of this. I am no dietician though and maybe I am off the mark, but it can’t hurt in any case.
Your pizza looks fabulous! Another great investment that wasn’t costly that I ‘recently’ purchased (two years ago during COVID lockdown) was a set of cast iron skillets. I make my Chicago style pizza in them and it brings that home-style taste here to me in beautiful Nova Scotia. (Ahem – they don’t make good pizza here! Anywhere. But I am spoiled)
Sorry for the long reply. I guess I have a lot to say about pizza.
Enjoy!
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You do have a lot to say about pizza! Watching the pizza show I was interested in the number of things people can do with pizza. I am looking forward to do more.
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And leftovers for breakfast! Yum!
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and lunch and possibly dinner … 😉
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That looks gourmet, amazing the things you do when retired.
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Yes – now I have the time to indulge.
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Looks delicious, and congrats on looking at other methods to get your favourite pie 🙂
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