How to Make Your Own Pizza
Fresh or Frozen, This DIY Pizza Is Better for You and The Planet
Nov 20, 2008
More frozen food companies are coming out with "gourmet" lines of frozen pizza; some even boast organic ingredients on a whole wheat or spelt crust. No matter how you dress it, buying a frozen pizza is wasteful: It takes a bite out of your wallet, and uses a lot of fossil fuels in transporting it from the manufacturer to your local grocery chain. It also needs a lot of electricity to keep them frozen.
Pizza is Cheap and Easy to Make Yourself
A big myth about pizza is the difficulty in making them. Sure, you may not have a chef's flair in flinging a rotating round of dough in the air, but you can knead and roll dough out, right?
If this is your first time, relax: It's much easier than it sounds. The ingredients are affordable, and even if you do top it with expensive delicacies the price will be overall less expensive than buying it frozen - or even in a restaurant.
Pizza Dough Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups flat beer or warm water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1-2 tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil
- 3 ¾ cup stoneground flour or 3 2/3 cups of spelt or wholewheat flour
- 2 tablespoons Yeast
Optional: dried herbs like basil, oregano or thyme.
If you own a bread machine, put everything in the order mentioned above, and set your machine to "dough".
If you don't have one, do the following:
- Put your yeast in I½ cup of warm water, in which you've placed the tablespoon of sugar. Wait at least three minutes for the mix to get foamy.
- While you are waiting for the yeast to rise, mix the flour and salt together. If you wanted a herbed crust, add your herbs to the flour mixture. Make a well in the centre of your bowl - this is where you'll pour the remaining liquids.
- Pour the remaining 1 cup of water or beer, and olive oil into the well, and add the yeast mixture.
- Knead the mixture together until you feel it becoming smooth and less sticky. It takes about fifteen minutes until most dough start to feel elastic: The more air you are introducing to the mixture will make for a crispier dough.
This dough should yield about two medium-sized pizza, or one large one. Divide the dough into two pieces, and roll it onto a floured surface. Cover it with plastic wrap and wait for it to double in bulk, roughly an hour or so.
Freeze Dough for Later Use
At this stage, you can freeze the dough balls, just put them in a freezer-safe plastic bag and let them thaw and rise before you make the pizza. It will be good for about three months in the freezer.
Homemade, Oven-Ready Pizzas
If you are ready to top them and freeze them, here are a few tips:
- Roll out the dough, and spread your favourite spaghetti sauce over the top. Add your toppings - but not the cheese. By adding it at this stage, it would melt and get crusty, making a re-heating experience a bit disappointing.
- Put the pizza in a preheated 400 F oven, for ten minutes. It will be half raw, but don't worry: Pizza is one of those dishes that can be frozen halfway through and then cooked to completion once out of the freezer.
- Once the half cooked pizza is out of the oven, top it with cheese and let it cool. Once completely cold to the touch, wrap in plastic and place it in your freezer.
- When you're ready for frozen pizza, just take it out, remove the plastic and place it your preheated 400F oven, directly on the oven rack for ten minutes.
How do you top your pizza?
