Due to the yeast and eating the pizza just after cooking, the star of the show is the dough. Making the dough is fast, fun, easy, and shockingly, astoundingly essentially just dirt cheap! With the dough and sauce ready, making a pizza is faster than delivery, carryout, or even frozen.
So, I've wanted a pizza for one, one pizza for a whole lunch or dinner. I end up with a pizza about 6 1/2" in diameter with sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni. It's darned good. It's a filling meal, about 600 C (food calories).
Shock #1: The cost of the flour is, in the US, shopping at Sam's Club not counting the cost of the club membership, via 25 pound bags, sit down for this, 9 US cents per pizza. Shopping at usual US grocery stores, the cost is about double that, 18 cents per pizza.
Shock #2: The 9 cents was so surprising that last night just out of curiosity I added up the cost of the ingredients for one pizza, just under 40 cents.
Shock #3: With the ingredients ready, can have a hot pizza ready to eat in 20 minutes with less than 15 minutes of being busy with the work and the other 5 minutes, say, reading Hacker News!
Shock #4: Don't need or want to use an oven! Still get the coveted crisp bottom crust from a high temperature oven with a pizza stone, but are done with the pizza even before an oven could get hot!
Yesterday I typed in some extensive notes as part of what software developers know well -- now that I'm making these pizzas, only myself and God understand how I'm going it, and without my notes in six months only God will still understand. So, I have the notes.
Here I will give a brief version.
The ingredients are:
For the dough, flour, water, yeast, and salt.
For the sauce, canned crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, some of the usual seasonings, and a little olive oil.
The cheese is just common shredded, part-skim Mozzarella.
The pepperoni is, well, just four slices of pepperoni widely available sliced.
The three most important tools are a common microwave oven, a restaurant style stamped steel saute pan with a bottom round and 7" in diameter and with a LONG handle, and a small burner on a common electric stove with power level set on medium.
Briefly here's what to do:
First make a batch of dough and divide it into 8 pieces, one piece per pizza. And make a batch of tomato sauce.
For the dough, use 1 Kg of flour. Likely by a little should prefer "bread and pizza" flour, e.g., at Sam's Club. To a bowl of about 5 quarts, add 1 T (tablespoon) of active dry yeast (either the standard stuff or "quick-rising" intended for bread machines). Can get the yeast in little paper envelopes -- the contents of one envelope, about 8 grams, works fine. Or can buy yeast in jars of about 4 ounces -- for that just use a tablespoon. Then add 700 ml of water at 110 F. Mix. Add 1 1/2 T table salt. Mix. Quickly before the salt kills the yeast, add the flour in roughly (can be VERY rough) 1/3rds. After each 1/3rd, mix with a kitchen cooking spoon. Will end with a lot of moist, sticky dough with little pieces not yet stuck to the main mass. No need to use fingers.
The proportion of flour to water, e.g., the 700 ml of water for the 1 Kg of dough for the flour I have, is critical. Should measure carefully. Since the water content of your flour may vary from mine, or may vary from one source of flour to another or just with the humidity where you store your flour, you may have to adjust the proportions a little. The flour I'm using may have relatively high water content; if so, you may have to use a little more water.
Put about 1/4 C (cup) of flour on a pastry board, spread the flour roughly to a rough circle roughly 1' in diameter. Scrape and or roll the dough out of the bowl and on top of the flour. Sprinkle about 1/4 C flour on the top and sides of the dough.
Now knead the dough for 8 minutes; the kneading completes the mixing of the flour, water, yeast and salt; 8 minutes can make a nice pizza; more than 8 can result in a pizza a little tough to chew.
To knead,(A) Using hands and fingers, press the dough to roughly (can be very rough here) twice its area on the board. (B) Pick up the far edge of the dough and pull it to you to fold the dough in half. (C) Now the dough is likely wider than long; if so, then rotate it 90 degrees. Repeat (A)-(C) for 8 minutes.
The first few steps of all of (A)-(C) will get the dough into one relatively smooth mass. About this time fingers and hands may be coated with dough; in this case rub hands and fingers to let the dough fall to the main mass. From now on will have little or no problem with a lot of the dough sticking to hands or fingers.
BIG, HUGE, point: When you start, think of the outside surface of the dough. Well that is ALL you EVER touch!!! The inside of the dough is sticky, but you NEVER touch it! See, as you fold the dough, you are making the outside surface that was next to the board ALL the surface. As you keep doing (A)-(C) for 8 minutes, the outside surface from the board will get stretched enough to start to become sticky. Okay, then add a few T of flour but ONLY to the board and UNDER the dough, NOT to the top of the dough!
After 8 minutes, the dough will feel elastic and start to spring back. The usual test is to press the dough with a finger and get some spring back. You are DONE. Put the dough back in the bowl (don't have to bother to clean the bowl), cover the bowl to keep kitchen air away from the dough (the kitchen air could dry the surface of the dough too much), and let the dough rise, that is, let the yeast grow and generate CO2. The dough will rise well at any temperature from a refrigerator to 100 F or so. But at 115 F, the yeast will start to die. Let the dough rise until roughly (can be very rough) double in volume.
Now divide the dough into the 8 pieces. Flour the pastry board again, use fingers to separate the dough from the surface of the bowl, and roll the dough onto the flour. Dust the surface of the dough with 1-4 T of flour. Form the dough to a long log, say, the length of the diagonal of the board. Cut the log in half; cut each piece in half; cut each piece in half. Now have 8 pieces, hopefully all about equal in weight. For the cut surfaces, touch them to the board to lightly flour them. Put each piece in its own covered bowl, e.g., the 24 ounce, covered, plastic bowls from ZipLoc (mine are years old -- maybe they are still for sale). Apply, snap on, the covers, let the dough rise, say, each piece to half fill its bowl, and refrigerate until ready for a pizza. Note: Pressure from the CO2 can pop off the lids; so occasionally snap the lids back on, again, to keep kitchen air from the dough.
For the tomato sauce, in a 3 quart pot, add 3 T of olive oil and lightly cook however much garlic you like. Add two cans of crushed tomatoes, 28 ounces net weight per can. Add 12 ounces of tomato paste. Add whatever seasonings might like, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, parsley. Mix. Heat slowly with occasional stirring to sterilize the mixture, say, to 180 F, cover, let cool, and refrigerate.
For a pizza, take a microwave proof plate about 7" in diameter, with fingers gently separate the dough from its bowl, place the dough in the center of the plate, and spread the dough to a disk about 7" in diameter (larger if you prefer a thinner pizza and have a larger plate) with a rim. Microwave on high for 1 minute; for even heating, rotate 180 degrees and microwave on high for 1 more minute. The dough will puff a LOT. Using a fork, gently separate the dough from the plate and place the dough in the saute pan with the flat side of the dough, the side that was next to the plate, down. Maybe press down some on some of the larger puffy parts of the dough.
Add and spread about 2-4 T of the tomato sauce. Add and spread about 1 ounce of the shredded Mozzarella, in volume of the loose shredded cheese maybe a little less than half a cup. Put on four slices of pepperoni. Put a lid on the pan; put the pan on the burner; wait about 13 minutes.
So the steel pan yields the desired crust on the bottom. The lid creates a small oven that cooks the rest of the dough and heats the sauce and pepperoni and melts the cheese.
Want the bottom of the pizza to be crisp but not burned. Want the rim of the pizza puffed and cooked enough not to be raw but also not too tough to chew; want the sauce hot and the cheese melted. I get these results, but with your equipment, not exactly the same as mine, you will likely need some trials (I did a lot of trials with my equipment).
Use a spatula to move the pizza to a cutting board and cut it into 4 slices, each with a piece of pepperoni. Slide to a luncheon plate, call your significant other to share this, and start a second one!
For the plate I use in the microwave, that is from a very old collection of from some frozen dinners. The plates are essentially paper with some plastic. They are about the right size and are microwave proof, and the dough, once heated in the microwave, does not stick strongly. A glass pie plate might be a good alternative.
The pizza, once cooked, won't stick strongly to a well seasoned saute pan.
Making the batch of dough takes only about 20 minutes and is fun.
Most of the time for making the sauce is just opening the 3-4 cans.
Each pizza is ready in a little less than 20 minutes. Eaten just after cooking it's GOOD.
From my notes from yesterday, here are the costs for the main ingredients and the total cost (US cents) per pizza:
9.524 Flour
1.100 Yeast
0.684 Olive Oil
5.320 Crushed Tomatoes
2.213 Tomato Paste
11.900 Mozzarella Cheese
8.462 Pepperoni
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39.203
It's fast, easy, fun, cheap, and good!