We are a pizza lovin’ family and I can’t believe the price of frozen pizzas these days – so we usually make our own. When making our own pizza dough isn’t in the agenda, I love to pick up Trader’s Joe’s refrigerated pizza dough for only $1.29. You can get it in wheat, white and herb – and it’s the perfect foundation for the pizza of your choice!
If you hadn’t noticed yet, I’ve been kinda on a feta kick lately, so this pizza is a kind of Greek variety, but you can put whatever toppings you have around the house.
INGREDIENTS
Trader Joe’s pizza dough – only $1.29 at Trader Joe’s, look in refrigerated section (see pic below)
Tomato sauce (or pasta sauce)
Basil – I love the basil plants at Trader Joe’s, only $2.99 and you can get plenty from the initial plant, then keep growing your own (plus it makes your kitchen smell amazing!)
Sliced crimini mushrooms – I love Trader Joe’s mushrooms, they are super meaty and flavorful
Sliced Kalamata olives – Great price at Costco
Feta cheese – Also a great thing to get at Costco
Thinly sliced tomatoes
Whatever other toppings you like
DIRECTIONS
- The dough directions state you should set it out on the counter for 20 minutes to let it rise.
- We use baking stones, but you could probably use any pan that you have. Rub with olive oil. Roll out dough. You can make mini pizzas, one big pizza – whatever you’d like.
- Pre-cook the dough about 10 minutes. The directions don’t call for this, but we always like lots of toppings, so we find the dough cooks more thoroughly if we give it a head start.
- Add tomato sauce and toppings
- Bake for about 10 minutes more, until crust is brown and toppings are melted
A lot of these same ingredients are in the Greek Chicken and Orzo Skillet recipe I posted last week, so if you have extras this might be something you want to make for dinner the next night.
What are you favorite pizza varieties?
re: Trader Joes pizza dough…
If you have a warm place, letting it set out for 2 or 3 hours in an oiled steel mixing bowl with a clean cloth over the top really helps it along to rise to probably a third larger than it came out of the plastic bag…
…but this only works if the dough is immediately fresh from the store.
If the dough has set in the fridge for a couple of days after purchase, there’s no chance that anything is going to happen via a 20 minute rising stage that will make a better pizza.
TJ’s dough has really helped a lot of us pizza-at-home people produce some creative and uniquely funky pizzas that are definately far better than the generic “frozen in a box” pseudo-cheese/high salt/high calorie per slice/over-oiled monsters with all their frankenstein ingredients that pass for food these days.
Making your own pizza, while moderately more time-consuming than cutting the plastic off that frozen slab of who-knows-what-it-is-and-slapping-it-onto-a-pan-at-425 degrees…
…is truly an entry level access point towards stepping forward in the spirit of making better food for your family (and oddly enough stepping backwards in time in the process of using more basic elements of food to sustain yourself and family each day).
None of us EVER has enough time to dally about spending time experimenting in the kitchen these days, as life events constantly intrude with immediacy to replace our fleeting free seconds with a crisis of the moment that requires all attention.
That said, there are small and incremental things we can do each day to step away from the bad, and move toward the good in the way we eat.
Consider TJ’s dough as a starter project…it’s only a buck and a quarter or so…take a few moments of time to create your own unique work with it…learn from the experience of burned crusts and too-late/too-soon added/under/over-cooked toppings of the wrong sort that end up fairly icky and not quite there yet…and then take the next step beyond to challenge yourself to use your limited time in the kitchen to bring forward your best, rather than your worst by being brave in experimentation and learning from that moment.
Be happy, your worst cannot possibly be as bad as what’s out there.
In a recent week, I was invited to attend (as an alumni) a UW frat house event during graduation week which resulted in the opening of several Costco-sized cans of chili, warming them in a hardly washed great vessle/vat on the stove on high that would have caught fire if on for much longer, and adding that collective mass over 15 packettes of three minute boiled top ramen noodles, with several brick of cheap cheddar from Safeway melted over the top – grin/grimacing/yet totally understanding). The recipients of that mess did survive the experience, but did they benefit from it? I say nay!
Whatever you are doing for your family is better than this.
Thanks to Queen Bee for the forum.
Awesome, I never knew they had pizza dough that inexpensive. I’m gonna have to make pizza soon. š
I love the TJ’s pizza dough. š We were surprised it how good it tasted and it’s super easy!