This post is part of my new Starting Out Series. Click here to learn more about this series.
How many times have you had a craving for pizza, but not wanted to shell out $20 for delivery, and don’t want a frozen pizza, because while delicious at times (especially at 3am), it’s still a frozen pizza. Well, meet your new best friend. For a whopping $.73 too! Jiffy homemade pizza mix.
This mix is really easy to use, all you really need to do is follow the directions on the back. However, when I add in the water to mix the dough, I always add just a little bit more water. After stirring, you should get a dough ball that looks like this.
Cover the dough ball, the box says for 5 minutes, but I usually do it for at least 10 minutes.
While the dough is rising, brown your meat, or chop your veggies. Enter another one of your best friends, the meat counter at the local grocery store. The meat counter is a great way to get really fresh meat for cheap! How is it cheap? You only buy what you need. For instance, pre packed sausage usually comes in a 1lb pack, but I only needed a ½ lb. So I went to the meat counter and only got what I needed. Perfect.
Anyway, when you take the sausage out of the pack and put it in the pan, it’s probably going to look like this.
That’s fine, we just have to brown it. To do that, turn the stove to medium high heat and take a spatula to the meat. With the spatula vertical, just keep making up and down motions with the spatula until the meat is fully cooked.
Depending on how much grease is in the sausage, you may want to drain it. DO NOT POUR GREASE DOWN THE SINK DRAIN! This will cause the drain to clog. I like to put a couple paper towels on a plate and pour the meat onto the plate and then put the meat back in the pan with the grease on the plate.
Now that we have the meat cooked, let’s get back to the dough. By now, you should have a dough ball that looks like this.
I like to spray the ball with some nonstick spray, and wet my fingers before working with the dough. Spraying the dough and getting your fingers wet will help keep the dough from sticking to your fingers
You need to knead the dough. Basically you punch the dough so that it is easier to work with. After doing this, take a little bit of corn meal.
This is an example of what a box of it would look like, and use the corn meal to spread the dough. Start in the middle and work the dough out to the edges. When you’ve done this, then put the dough in the oven to bake without toppings for about 5 minutes. This helps the dough cook so that the top of the pizza doesn’t cook while the dough is still soggy.
When that’s done, you should have a crust that looks like this.
When you do, now you add your toppings.
Now stick it in the oven for, and about 15 minutes later, delicious homemade pizza!
Simple? Cheap? Tasty? Perfect for someone just starting out!
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