Pizza as poor food

Yes it is.

No, not when you order out and have some stoned, pimply-faced denizen of the World of Warcraft deliver it to your door. Hell, having pizza delivered or made by someone else is a great way to go broke fast.

Pizza was always poor food around our place when we were kids. A little flour, a little cheese, some cheap sausage and you were on your way. A good pizza made at home should cost around $3.00 and feed the family pretty well. Ten bucks and you have a party.

Just remember you have to set up for it the day before. This ain’t no fast food.

The night before

Pizza Dough:

It is:

• 5 cups of flour
• 1.75 cups water
• teaspoon of flour.
• 2 tablespoons of sugar.
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 2 teaspoons of yeast

Throw everything together and knead the hell out of it for 10-15 minutes. Get a good gluten stretch going and then put it in the fridge and let it rise for 24 hours. I use a #10 can with a snap lid to keep it in the fridge.

Pizza Sauce

Mix equal amounts of tomato sauce and tomato paste. put it on the stove over low heat and heat slowly until everything is hot and mixing well. Toss in some garlic powder, some onion powder, some basil, some oregano, and some beef bouillon powder. Don’t use any salt, the bouillon is plenty salty. Let it cook for about a half hour and put it in the fridge to cool overnight.

You will notice that I didn’t give any specifics here. I would start with a teaspoon of each as a starting point and then adjust your recipe to your taste. Sometimes it works better if you mix everything into the watery tomato sauce first, then add the paste when everything is mixed up

Cooking night

Prepare the crust

You have to pull the pizza dough out of the fridge a couple hours before you want to eat. It should be around double the size of what you started with the day before.

Let it warm up a little and then use a rolling pin to flatten it out as thick as you wish the dough to be. The recipe above make two pizzas. When you have it rolled out, oil it up on one side and put it oil side down onto a cookie sheet and cover it with a towel. Let it sit for an hour or so. It has done most of the raising already so don’t expect to much to happen here. After an hour or so, go turn on the oven to 425 F and let it warm up

After it has sat around for an hour, Oil up the side facing up(you've already done the down side) spoon on a cup or so of the pizza sauce, sprinkle with some Kraft parmesan cheese (My family is Italian an we always buy the Kraft in a can parmesan cheese…so if any of you poseurs use fresh grated, us real Italians mock you) then throw on some toppings. cover with about a half pound of mozzarella and you are off to the races

Total Cost:

Ingredients: Flour: $0.40, Sauce: $0.45, parmesan: $0.20, Mozzarella Cheese: $1.00, Toppings $1.00

Oven: 3kWh for 2 hours at $0.08 kWh = 0.48

Pizza Cost $3.53

Additional benefits, kitchen is quite warm.