Cook it Fresh

From closest to furthest: homemade, chef boyardee, and pillsbury pizzas

Pizza is one of those dishes that I love to make homemade, but rarely do.  This is probably due to the fact that pizza is one of our fallback don’t-have-time-to-cook meals and so we usually end up buying a frozen or delivery pizza at the end of a busy day when there’s no time to mix, knead, and raise pizza dough. Lately I began to wonder if there is a middle ground way to make pizza.  Maybe some kind of mix or kit that would be cheaper than delivery pizza and closer to tasting like homemade pizza.  On a recent investigative trip to the grocery store I turned up two products that might be the answer to this pizza quandry:  pillsbury refrigerated pizza dough and Chef Boyardee pizza kit.  The kit includes everything from a crust mix to the pepperoni and sauce;  all you have to add is water.   Could either of these products approximate the taste of homemade pizza at a fraction of the time? Below is my tried and true homemade pizza crust recipe that I compared these products to.  The original recipe is from Sunset Best Kids Cookbook that I had as a child and now can’t find anywhere online, but it just shows how long I’ve been making this pizza dough and it always turns out well!  I decided to make all of the pizzas pepperoni so that I could easily compare the prices to the Chef Boyardee Kit so I topped the Pillsbury and homemade crust with canned pizza sauce, pre-shredded mozzarella cheese and pepperoni slices.

Can’t Top it Pizza Dough

Makes 1 medium pizza, about 4 servings

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour, and a little extra for kneading

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 packet of active dry yeast

3/4 cup warm water

1 Tbsp. olive oil to grease bowl and pan

toppings (in this case pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni)

1.  Measure the 2 cups flour into a medium mixing bowl and make a well in the center.  Add the salt, sugar, and yeast to the well.  Pour the warm water into the well and let it sit for about 10 minutes or until the yeast becomes bubbly.  Mix the yeast mixture into the flour until it is well combined.

2.  On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for about 10 minutes or until it is very elastic.  Lightly grease a medium bowl with half of the olive oil.  Form the dough into a ball and turn it in the bowl a few times until it is coated with oil.  Place a clean, damp towel over the dough and place it in a warm place for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until it has doubled in size.

3.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  Once the dough has risen, punch it down and place it once again on a lightly floured surface.  With a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out into a circle about 10 inches across or a 9 x 13 inch rectangle, depending on which pan you are using.  ( I don’t have a pizza pan so I always bake mine on a rimmed, metal baking sheet in a rectangular shape.)

4.  Place the dough on a pan lightly oiled with the rest of the olive oil and cover it with whatever toppings you desire leaving about 1/2 inch ring of bare dough around the edges.  Fold the bare dough over to form a crust.  Lightly brush the crust with olive oil and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

homemade pizza crust dough with toppings

Clockwise from top left: homemade dough, chef boyardee dough, pillsbury dough

Once all three pizzas were baked, we began the taste test.  The Chef Boyardee kit, although inexpensive, was not that much cheaper than the homemade pizza and was not worth the money.  The finished pizza from this kit looked pretty unappetizing and tasted no better.  The cheese in the kit, which looked like a fine white powder, dissolved into the sauce so that it was hard to tell it was even there.  The crust was grainy and flavorless and the sauce was overpoweringly sweet.  We threw away most of that pizza, it was that bad.  The pizza made with Pillsbury crust was a bit more promising.  It looked as delicious as the homemade crust and the first bites tasted pretty good too, but the crust got soggy very quickly.  Before we had time to have a second piece, the crust had gone completely limp on the bottom, despite being very well browned.  I thought the Pillsbury crust had a little bit of a salty, chemical flavor too, but the other tasters didn’t mention that so maybe it was my imagination.   The Pillsbury crust was also the most expensive, but only by a little bit, and was the fastest to make.   The homemade crust was, as usual, very good.  It was chewy with a good flavor and didn’t go limp like the crust from a can.  The toppings that were not from the kit also tasted much better, as I expected.  I just didn’t see how pepperoni and cheese that had sat on a shelf, unrefrigerated for months could taste good, and I was right.  I would venture to guess that the ingredients in this kit probably aren’t very good for you either given the number of preservatives needed to keep it from spoiling on the shelf.  Not that pepperoni pizza is exactly a health food in any form!

Bottom Line: As far as flavor and texture go, there is still no really great replacement for homemade pizza dough, but it does take a long time to make.  If you’re in a hurry the Pillsbury refrigerated crust tasted and looked pretty close to homemade, but you’ll want to eat it fast before it goes soggy!

Later on this week I’ll put up my fourth installment of Thanksgiving side dishes.  This week:  Sweet potato casserole, canned versus fresh.