Homemade Frozen Pizza

Ryan and I have had Friday Pizza Nights ever since...well, probably ever since we were married. This is an easy way to limit having pizza to 1 night a week on a regular basis if you have a husband like mine who would much rather eat pizza every night of the week. We've gone through our share of trying different kids, too. Back when we were "rich", we would get a Domino's pizza most Friday nights. I remember after we got a Sam's Club membership, we would get the DiGiorno or Freschetta pizzas, since they were cheaper there. And better tasting. After having kids, though, we were often left back with the Tony's $2.50 special. Or if we were lucky, Red Baron for $3.50. After all that frozen pizza, I just started to get a little sick of it...and with our growing family, we were quickly moving toward eating two frozen pizzas per meal.

Earlier this year, I started making my own pizzas. At that time, I wasn't so much concerned about if it was cheaper or not, but I knew it tasted better and it would feed our whole family. As a bonus, I could also make my half supreme and Ryan's half plain meat.

Now that I have the freezer space, I decided to make 6 pizzas in one day and freeze them. This is an especially good time to try this out, as it will also ease my busyness over the holiday season. I have also found some suprising results as far as how cheap this way of making pizza is. These estimates are to make 6 pizzas that are 1/2 supreme, 1/4 pepperoni, and 1/4 Canadian bacon.

2 cans mushrooms - 50 cents each
1 can black olives - $1
1 green pepper - $1
1 onion - $1
4 cans tomato sauce - $1
2 packages pepperoni (probably only use 1.5 packages) - $6
2 packages Canadian bacon - $4
3 bricks mozzarella cheese - $6

Not counting my seasonings or my dough ingredients, it costs about $3.42/pizza. My dough recipe is as follows:

2 C all-purpose flour
2 t active dry yeast (Fleischmann's, not Red Star)
1 t sugar
1/2 t salt
3/4 C warm water
2 T olive oil

I haven't gotten down into the nitty gritty of how much it costs to use regular baking ingredients like these, so...I guess I'll just have to wait to figure out a real price. But the point is that instead of buying 2 of the cheapest pizzas for $5 every Friday night, or even 1 Little Caesar's pizza for $5.....I can make one of my own, that will fill up my whole family, for under $5. Maybe even under $4. And that's worth it.