I’ve mentioned before that homemade pizza is much cheaper than delivered or restaurant pizza. It costs me $2.65 to make a pizza at home compared to paying $25 for delivery. That’s about one-tenth the price of delivered.
Once you’ve got it down, homemade pizza tastes as good, if not better, than most delivered pizza, and it doesn’t even take that long to make… providing you have the dough ready.
Luckily, raw pizza dough is easy to freeze. My system is to make a big batch, divide it into pizza-sized portions, and freeze it. On the day we’re having pizza, all I have to do is pull one of the dough balls out of the freezer and by dinnertime, it’s ready to be made into pizza. Here’s how I do it:
Freezer Pizza Dough:
(Makes enough dough for four 12″ pizzas)
Ingredients:
-
4 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
2 2/3 c warm water
7 c all-purpose flour
1/4 c olive oil
2 Tbs salt
1 Tbs sugar
Directions:
In a mixer, add the yeast and sugar.
Turn the water on your faucet to hot and let it run until you see steam. You want warm-to-hot water to stimulate the yeast.
Once the water it hot, add it to the yeast and sugar. Quickly add the flour on top of the warm water to lock in the heat and continue yeast activation. Add the salt and oil.
Mix the dough for 1 minute on low speed until all the ingredients are blended. Switch to a dough hook and knead the dough for 10 minutes on medium speed. At the end, you should have a compact dough that is smooth and elastic.
Spray a bowl with oil to keep the dough from sticking. Put the dough in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set the bowl in a warm out-of-the way spot until it doubles in size, about an hour and a half.
To divide the dough: Gently remove the dough from the bowl. It’s okay if it deflates a bit. With a cleaver or some other kind of knife, cut the dough into four similar-sized pieces. Weigh the dough to make sure it is the same size–usually each ball weighs about 3/4 of a pound.
Roll each dough section into a ball. Wrap in freezer-safe parchment paper or wax paper to avoid freezer burn. Put in a plastic bag and stick in the freezer.
You now have dough for four pizzas. To defrost, simply take a ball of dough out and let defrost on the counter. But dinnertime, you’ll have nice fresh dough to shape into a pizza.
Hurrah! Pizza about to go into the oven.
I definitely need to stash some of this dough in the freezer ASAP!
This looks easy and delicious. Would you share some of your favorite pizza toppings? Do you use pizza sauce (homemade? in a bottle from the store?)
Amy, thanks! I use homemade sauce. Next time I make a batch, I’ll share how I do it. My favorite toppings… homemade sausage, or bacon. What about you?
Nice! My husband makes awesome dough and leaves at the fridge. We have never frozen it but I’ll try it next time.