Looking to save money without giving up your Friday night comfort meal? Here’s how much cheaper it is to make your own pizza!
In A Nutshell:
It costs around $2.50 to make a large, homemade cheese pizza which is cheaper than the same pizza at Domino’s ($13), Pizza Hut ($11), and Toppers ($18). If you eat pizza often, you can buy toppings in bulk to save on cost per ounce and bring down pizza cost further. Pizza dough is easy to make and can be made at home with a yeasted, no yeast, or sourdough dough. You can even use a bread machine to do the work for you! If you’re not ready to commit to homemade pizza, you can still save money by buying pre-made frozen pizzas or looking for coupons to your local pizza chains.
Is it Cheaper to Make Your Own Pizza?
Compared to ordering take-out, its almost always cheaper to make your own pizza. Plus it doesn’t have to take much longer than ordering one! Unless you have a significant coupon for pizza from a chain restaurant, you’ll find yourself with more money in your pocket with DIY pizza.
How Much Cheaper is it to Make Your Own Pizza?
Pizza dough is made up of flour, sugar, salt, water, olive oil and either baking powder or yeast to give it rise. The cost of dough for a single pizza is under $0.50. Often times you can find canned pizza sauce on sale for $0.99 in weekly ads at stores like Hy-Vee but Walmart has delicious pizza sauce with a resealable lid always available for $1.52. This is enough to make 2 large pizzas so $0.76 a piece. I like to buy shredded mozzarella cheese in bulk at Walmart because we use mozzarella cheese in a variety of recipes regularly. This gives me the cheapest cost per ounce of cheese. In total, a large homemade cheese pizza will cost about $2.50. Even Dominos deals can’t beat that!
The same large, cheese pizza will cost $13 at Domino’s, $11 at Pizza Hut, and $18 at Toppers. That’s $8.50-$11.50 savings per pizza. And that’s before the delivery fee and driver’s tip! It is significantly cheaper to make your own pizza. If you, like most Americans, are someone that enjoys eating pizza regularly, you might consider saving your pizza money for something else!
3 Types of Pizza Dough
There are 2 types of pizza dough. One uses yeast and one does not. Pizza dough without yeast is much faster to make because it does not require rise time but yeasted doughs tend to be a little easier to roll and have a texture more similar to take-out pizza. I have made both types of dough and I like them both depending on how much time I have to make the dough.
No Yeast Pizza Dough
You can find my favorite recipe for no yeast dough here. I love this recipe because it takes about 10 minutes to make, and I’ve never had any issues with it! I usually double the recipe to make one large, family size pizza (~15″). I’ve tried a variety of toppings on here and they all take 10-12 minutes to cook.
Yeasted Pizza Dough
I have yet to make a yeasted pizza dough by hand, but I did buy a bread machine this summer and we’ve been making yeasted pizza dough in it almost weekly. In the bread machine it takes 50 minutes to make the dough. Those minutes are non-active for me, though, so I can do other things while the machine proves and kneads the dough. After that it takes about 10 minutes to roll out the dough and assemble the pizza. Another 10-12 minutes to cook and dinner is ready. That’s only 10 minutes of active work and 10 minutes in the oven!
Yeasted Bread Recipe
The yeasted pizza dough recipe I like to use is the recipe for a 15″ pizza that came with my bread machine:
- 1-1/8 cup warm water
- 1-1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil
- 3-1/3 cup flour (Bread flour or all purpose flour both work)
- 1-1/2 tsp salt
- 1-1/2 tsp sugar
- 1-1/2 tsp dry quick rise yeast
Sourdough Pizza Dough
Sourdough uses fermentation from the active sourdough starter for rise. I have not personally tried cooking with sourdough before but I’ve had pizza made by a friend using this recipe that turned out delicious! Sourdough is more difficult to get into than yeasted and no yeast doughs and takes more prep time. Unless you are familiar with sourdough and keeping a starter alive, I would avoid making your first homemade pizza with sourdough.
Money Saving Hacks for Cheaper Pizza Toppings
Here are some ways you can make your favorite pizza for even cheaper.
- Cheese Pizza: A plain, 1 cheese pizza is the cheapest type of pizza to make.
- Pepperoni: Try buying a large resealable bag of pepperoni for a lower cost per ounce
- Sausage: Try browning a pound of sausage but only using half a pound on the pizza. throw the other half in the freezer to save time on a later date.
- Supreme: Try cutting up green peppers and onions ahead of time and freezing them. This allows you to buy in bulk for a lower cost per item and saves you the time of cutting them later on.
Other Alternatives to Take-Out Pizza
Not ready to commit to homemade pizza but still want to cut the cost of ordering out? You’ve got other options! Try looking for coupons on the website of your favorite pizza place, or in the newspaper or junk mail delivered to your home. I’ve often seen Pizza Hut, Papa Murphy’s, and Toppers run coupons in my local weekly newspaper.
For even more savings, consider purchasing pre-made frozen pizzas from the store. Red Baron, DiGiorno, Roma, Tombstone, and Jack’s are all slightly cheaper than ordering fresh. The quality is typically less appealing than a take-out or homemade pizza but it’s cheap to get and fast to cook! The other benefit of frozen pizzas is that you can store it in your freezer for busy nights that don’t go as planned.
Have you made the switch to homemade pizza? Let me know how much you’ve saved!