I started this post before I came across my least favorite ad in the world. Tonight is pizza night, so I decided to time myself and see how long it takes to make pizza from scratch. I also priced out the ingredients to see if I could make this meal for under $10.

Homemade pizza is so easy and inexpensive compared to take out or delivery pizza. It is much healthier too. It can even be made ahead of time and frozen for the nights when you need a quick meal.

Pizza Crust

• 1 1/2 cups hot water ~ we don’t pay for water
• 1/3 cup olive oil ~ $.60
• 1/3 cup honey ~ $.60
• 2 tsp salt ~ $.05
• 4-4/12 cups flour ~ $.20 (I use whole wheat, but you can use white or a mixture of white and wheat)
• 1 Tbs yeast ~ $.10
• 2 Tbs Italian seasoning $.15
• 1 Tbs garlic powder $.05

I put everything in my bread maker on the dough setting, but if you want to use a mixture combine all the wet ingredients, add the yeast, salt, Italian seasoning, garlic and then add flour until you reach your desired consistency. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, a little longer if you are using whole wheat flour. Let rise until doubled.

After your dough has risen (or your dough cycle has finished in the bread maker) take your dough and roll it into you pizza shape. For thin crust pizza roll the dough very thin.

Thin crust pizza

Topped and ready to go in the oven.

This is probably the main reason I like making our own pizza. We decide on the toppings and we never have to worry about the delivery place messing up our order!

If you want to freeze your pizza bake your crust (without toppings) for about 6 minutes at 400 degrees. Once the crust has cooled add toppings and then wrap and freeze.

Time it took me to make homemade whole wheat pizza.

6 min 22 seconds to gather ingredients, put crust ingredients in bread machine, and clean up mess.
The bread machine took 1 hour and 25 minutes to make the crust. I did nothing in the kitchen during that time, I checked email, worked on school with the kids and finished some chores.
After the dough was finished I spent another 14 minutes and 30 seconds rolling out the dough, grating cheese, topping the pizza and doing the dishes.

This brings the total hands on time to 20 minutes and 52 seconds. The total time from start to finish was 2 hours. If you have a bread machine you can start this recipe in the morning, and then spend about 30 minutes before dinner making the pizza and baking it. I think this is a very convenient meal.

• Crust total $1.70
• Sauce $.99
• 1 lb mozzarella cheese $3.00
• Pepperoni $1.00

We usually add a salad and carrot sticks, so I will count an additional $1.50 for those.

Total meal cost $8.20 for 8 people. This recipe makes two huge pizzas, one thin crust and one thick crust. That beats KFC’s $10 for 4 people. If you add more toppings to your pizza your cost might go up, but I use leftovers to top our pizzas so there is no extra cost.

For more recipes visit Tempt my Tummy Tuesday, and for more Tightwad Tips visit Mary.

For more Kitchen Tips visit Tammy.

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