Save Money and Treat Yourself to Pizza Week
Ready-made pizza dough is one of the best things to buy at the grocery store. You can find it in the freezer or refrigerator aisle, it’s usually sold in 16- or 20-ounce balls, and the flavor is pretty reliable all around. For a couple of dollars, you can bring home an all-purpose yeast dough and make things like cinnamon rolls , easy doughnuts , or pretzels . But you should really stretch the dough (hehe) and make four personalized pizzas out of one ball.
Start Pizza Week Bright
I know four days isn’t exactly a typical work week, but it’s pretty close (for some nurses it’s more than a pizza work week). Buy a ball of ready-made pizza dough. It will most likely be from the grocery store, but sometimes pizzerias will sell you dough. I buy a frozen 20 oz scoop and put it in the fridge on Sunday. By Monday afternoon the dough had already thawed. Lightly flour your countertop and drop the pizza dough onto the flour. Using a knife or sharp bench scraper, cut the dough into quarters.
Just like with pie crust or any other dough you want to roll out or stretch, the shape you start with is the shape you end up with. If you stretch out that weird triangle of dough, you end up with a weird triangular pizza. It’s not the end of the world, but the remaining dough pieces will slowly deflate in the refrigerator over the next few days, and the round shape with the skin will help them rise. Form the dough into balls and place them seam side down on a little flour. (Watch my Bread Shaping 101 video to learn how to roll fun dough balls.)
Turn the dough balls over, placing excess flour on the countertop, and wrap three balls loosely in a plastic bag or two so they don’t touch. I usually put them in used grocery bags that I brought home from the store. Seal the bags and place excess food in the refrigerator. Over the course of a week, you will notice that the bread balls gradually deflate and even gain some flavor during this time.
Make the best pizza with the best tools:
Perfect personal pizza every time
1. Preheat the oven
The fourth ball of dough on your counter is for today. I eat pizza for lunch, but you can wrap and chill this ball of dough in the refrigerator until a time is convenient for you. Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it hang on the counter while you preheat the oven to 400°F. I like to cook my pizza in a cast iron skillet, but you can use a pizza stone, Dutch oven, or parchment-lined baking sheet. Preheat a heavy cooking utensil in the oven, but a baking sheet is not necessary. They heat up in no time.
2. Stretch the dough
When the oven is hot, lift the ball and use your fingertips to flatten the dough by swirling it around. Be sure to start from the center, rotating and stretching the dough. It should stretch easily as the gluten has rested, but if you find that the dough is shrinking again, place it on a lightly floured countertop and let it rest for another five minutes. Go back and try stretching it again. The dough will be quite thin, which is ok as long as you don’t poke a hole in it.
3. Add filling and bake.
Once the circle is about 8 or 9 inches in diameter, I carefully place it on the hot cast iron skillet. You have about a minute of buffer time to smooth and level the dough in the pan before it starts to set and cook. Then lay out the dough the way you like. Spread on tomato sauce, barbecue sauce or one of these alternative sauces and add cheese and toppings. Bake for about 15 minutes until the bottom is crispy, or remove earlier if you like it less done.
You can top the pizza differently each day, or even skip a day if you need to—the dough won’t be too hard until about the fifth day. See? Saving money has its benefits. It was only Pizza Monday and you still have three potential pizzas in the fridge. It’s a work week I can look forward to.