Make it Monday: Pizza Dough and Sauce

It's amazing how a few simple, cheap ingredients can be combined quickly and easily to feed our family. 

This week I made pizza sauce and dough. I spent $.50 on ingredients for the sauce and it will cover two 11x16 in. pan pizzas. And, I used $.39 worth of ingredients for the dough in the two pizzas.  Total:  $.45 for a 11x16 in. pizza.  

The most expensive part of a pizza is, of course, the cheese.  We love the Kroger Pizza Blend shredded cheese which is on sale for $4.99 (32 oz. bag) this week at Smith's and we can generally get about 3 pizza's out of that bag (if the kids are putting on the cheese only 2, if dad is putting on the cheese 4).  Plus the cost of any other toppings and we are looking at around $3 for a fresh baked homemade pizza.

To make dinner time a quicker, easier operation.  I will freeze the little dough balls and the sauce.  Then, on the day we decide to have pizza I can pull what I need out of the freezer in the morning and let it defrost on the counter.  A half hour before dinner time I'll roll the dough out, stick it in the pan, and bake for 10 min.  Meanwhile, I'll prepare the toppings.   When the crust is partially cooked I'll pull it out and put on the sauce, cheese and toppings.  It'll need to bake for about 10 to 15 more minutes to get the cheese nice and bubbly.  Then, dinner is served.  Super Easy, Quick, and Cheap.  

Pictures of the completed pizza to follow...

Also this week I made bread and a Southwest Chicken Braid (yummy!). My Bread is getting better since I switched to Saf Instant yeast and I'm learning a few tricks on how to make a better loaf. All told I was in the kitchen for just under 2 hours, start to clean kitchen.