Like most normal people, 🙂 we LOVE our pizza here at the Frugal Farmer household. Let’s just face it: pizza ROCKS! But it can also be expensive. At our favorite local pizza joint, it’s not uncommon to spend $18-$20 per pizza, and in our big family, two pizzas is the minimum we’ll eat at a sitting.
Being frugal pizza lovers though, we save the spendy pizza outings for special occasions. How then, do we supplement our crazy wild pizza cravings in the meantime? By making pizza from scratch, of course! Both frugal and fabulous, the Frugal Farmer Best Homemade Pizza Recipe will both delight your taste buds and overjoy your pocket book. Here’s how it’s done.
Step One: Make the crust. We have one of two homemade pizza crust recipes we use. When we plan in advance and have time for the dough to rise, we use Bobby Flay’s awesome pizza dough recipe. Oh yeah, baby. Nothing but the best for our family. This chewy, yet moist crust makes for a great pan-type pizza crust, and it’s yummalicious.
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For those spur-of-the-moment pizza cravings, we use this fabulous and easy (no rise time) thin crust recipe. Like the Bobby Flay recipe, it tastes great but it boasts a thinner crust and a quick prep time.
Step Two: Season the crust. Brush the crust with olive oil, then sprinkle it with garlic powder and salt to give it extra flavor. Do this before baking.
Step Three: Determine your toppings. We do two kinds of pizza on pizza nights: a pepperoni pizza, and a veggie pizza.
For the pepperoni pizza: we spread on the sauce (a simple Rinaldi brand spaghetti sauce, usually leftover from the previous night’s spaghetti dinner. More frugal. 🙂 ) . Then we add a thin layer of shredded mozzarella cheese, spread on the pepperonis, add more mozzarella, and a thin coating of Parmesan for even more cheesy goodness.
This cookbook is FULL of delicious recipes: The Official John Wayne Way to Grill: Great Stories & Manly Meals Shared By Duke’s Family
For the veggie pizza: after the olive oil and spices, we add a thin layer of sauce, and sometimes we don’t add any additional sauce. Then we follow up by spreading on a thin layer of mozzarella, add our choice of veggies (usually green peppers, red onion, fresh-diced tomato, olive and sometimes baby spinach) add another layer of mozzarella and a thin coating of Parmesan. 
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Bake until the cheese and the crust are a light golden brown.
15 or 20 minutes later, it’s pizza delight. And for a fraction of the cost of quality takeout pizza. An added bonus: no nasty preservatives or chemicals.
I love me some good old-fashioned pizzeria pizza, but there’s nothing like making and enjoying a homemade ‘za with your family, and sitting down in front of the TV with a good movie. Try our best homemade pizza recipe and see what you think.
What’s your favorite restaurant dish to make at home? What’s your favorite pizza topping?
I thought I had a kid free day today was planning on some freezing cooking and stuff. Today I will try this recipe and have pizza for dinner. Thanks. 🙂 Have a great weekend.
You’ll have to let me know how you like it! 🙂
Gosh you make it sound so easy! I’ll have to try this. Thanks for sharing!
Easy AND delicious. We had it twice last week. 🙂
Yummm! This looks great!
Oh, it’s yummy. Will be a great meal for your new home. 🙂
My favorite restaurant food to make at home is homemade french fries. Yum! My favorite pizza topping is zucchini. Amazingly enough, our family prefers homemade pizza to the restaurant or take out kind. We usually buy the pre-done pizza crusts though. Perhaps we should try this out!
You should, Jayleen!!! It’s delightful, and cheap. 🙂 We love us some homemade fries too. Once in a great while we’ll have “State Fair Food” Days, where we eat all kinds of yummy stuff at home such as homemade deep fried fries and cheese curds. 🙂
We love our Friday night pizza too!! I make crust from scratch, though I tried something new last night… Not so good! Will try Mr. Flay’s version next time. I like to throw on any veggies sitting in the fridge. Last night we had some leftover roasted broccoli. I also frequently use squash. And have been known to add in shredded carrots. All so tasty!!
Let me know what you think, Mrs. Maroon, about the crust. I would LOVE broccoli on pizza, but I think the kids would rebel BIG time against that suggestion, LOL. 🙂
At our house homemade pizza is almost weekly. Our favorite is chicken bacon pizza. So homemade Alfredo sauce, baked chicken, usually small bits of bacon (normally turkey). I cut the bacon really small and spread it out so the flavor is there but not as much bacon. And then I top with peppers and onions with mozzarella cheese. I will usually double the crust recipe and make extra crusts or pizza for leftovers or I freeze them.
That sounds SO good, Rachel!!!! Any pizza with Alfredo sauce works for me. 🙂
I usually buy dough from fresh and easy, but other than that I love a good homemade pizza. My favorite one is goat cheese, basil, and zucchini pizza!
That sounds SO delicious, Tonya!!! I’ll have to make that one come summer gardening time. 🙂
Oh my! I’ll have another pizza recipe this weekend for our movie time. This must be delicious!
Hope you love it, Jayson!
Yum!! Four-cheese for me!
Any kind of cheese pizza is GOOD pizza. 🙂
This looks so yummy Laurie!! We love making pizzas from home! Hubby found a crust recipe a few years ago that he has mastered and he makes his own sauce so we always know we will love the toppings.
Will FB hubby be sharing that recipe any time soon, Shannon? 🙂
Pizza = my favorite thing in the world. I will be trying this with my kids.
I let the kids help make it with me and put on the toppings and they LOVE it!
I am all about homemade pizza. I usually use this recipe from Smitten Kitchen but I might have to give Bobby Flay’s a try. Either way, I will definitely be sprinkling some garlic powder on my next crust. If there’s a way to put too much garlic on pizza, I haven’t found it yet.
LOL, funny, Becca. 🙂 Thanks for sharing the recipe you use – I appreciate it!