Homemade Pizza

Today I got to go to one of my favourite supermarkets, the Garden Basket on Markham and 16th. I like it mainly for the produce section which is always beautifully laid out and varied. In summer, it is just outrageously good but off-season they do pretty well too.

I had it in mind to make pizza for tonight. No way was I going to make my own dough. I did that once and that is enough for me. Besides, the store-bought dough (Nino D'Aversa) looked really tempting. I planned on two pizzas a basic tomato and mozzarella, and a minced beef and onion.

Here is the tomato and mozzarella, before and after baking:

And here is the minced beef and onion, again before and after:

Both were tasty. For the tomato I used as a base my own homemade tomato sauce that I had to cook down to get the moisture out of.  For the other one, I made a basic white sauce with ricotta. I added come cubed cooked potatoes to the minced beef which I think was a mistake. It would have been better without them, but I had some left over so this seemed a good way to use them up. 

Having watched pizza makers at work, I can attest to the fact that it is a lot harder than it looks. I rolled and tugged my dough as thin as I could and not have it break, and it was still twice as thick as I like it.

Two medium pizzas from my local Pizzaville cost $ 25. As you can see below, it cost me a total of $ 23.44 in ingredients, of which an estimated $ 11.88 went on the pizzas. The amount I used in the pizzas in brackets. So it is cost effective and, if you are more organized than I am, probably takes about the same time as ordering out. But, more than that, you can control what goes in. For sure, mine weren't as "tasty" but I like to think that is because they weren't loaded with fat and sugar. Maybe I am just biased.

FOOD COSTS

Basil: $ 1.99 ($ 0.20)

Tomatoes: $ 2.37 ( $ 0.60)

Pizza Dough: $ 2.39 ($ 2.39)

Ricotta: $ 4.79 ($ 1.20)

Mozzarella: $ 5.49 ($ 5.49)

Beef: $ 6.41 ($ 2.00)

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