I Made It - Homemade Pizza

If you're anything like most American families, pizza is on the menu several times a month. It's a wonderfully versatile one-dish meal. If your family loves veggies you can make an all veggie pizza, if you love meats, you can make an all meat pizza, or mix it up. The options are endless.

The Back Story
My family, just like yours, loves pizza too. Back in our DINK (dual income, no kids) days, Hubby and I would order a pizza to be delivered and rent a movie from Blockbuster nearly every Friday night. It was a great stay-at-home date night. Now that we're living on one income with 2 kids, we still love pizza. But the price of ordering out? Not so much.


Thus began my quest for finding a less expensive alternative. The first recipe I found for the dough was a Food Network recipe that involved letting the dough rise. I tried it a few times, but found that it required too much time letting the dough rise. I didn't usually have dinner in the works far enough in advance to make that dough.

Then about a year or so ago I came across this recipe form MoneySavingMom.

The Review:
I love that I can pull this dough together in less than 15 minutes. It goes together incredibly easily. Basically you dump the ingredients in a bowl, mix it all up, knead it a bit and you're good to go. You can make it even easier by kneading it in your Mixer, Food Processor or Bread Machine. If you don't have any of those, kneading it by hand is not very difficult. It's a very forgiving dough and thus, perfect for this yeast-challenged cook. Slap on some toppings and you've got pizza in the oven in less than 25 minutes. It also freezes very well.

One of the reasons I like making homemade pizza so much is that I can adapt it to what we have on hand and my family's personal tastes so easily. My daughter prefers just cheese pizza. The rest of us have other favorite toppings. The pizza in the picture is 1/3 cheese, 1/3  ham and pineapple (my son's favorites), and 1/3 ham, pineapple and I added a bit of red pepper that I needed to use up.

Why We Love It:
I love this recipe because I can serve pizza to my family and not break our family budget. And since I usually use whole wheat flour when I make the dough, I don't feel so guilty about all the extra carbs. My kids love it because we can have pizza more often than we used to. Last week, when I was stumped for a dinner idea, pizza was one suggestion. Thanks to this recipe I can indulge my kids' request and not be the stingy mom-that-always-says-no.

I've also found a great recipe for home made pizza sauce. That review will be coming soon.

What's your favorite topping for pizza?