Thirty Minute Pizza (from scratch!)

Thirty Minute Pizza

Delivery pizza takes forty-five minutes. Homemade can take thirty. Delivered can cost twenty bucks a pie, including the tip. Homemade, even with high quality ingredients, costs a fraction of that. We typically have more choices for vegetable toppings than the local pizza joints.

Our secrets to a great pizza crust- crispy on the bottom yet tender and soft- without kneading or long proofing, are whole wheat flour and olive oil. (If you have only white flour, see this recipe.) Pans without holes in the bottom are essential.

While buying big blocks of cheese and grating it myself would save money, I wait for eight-ounce bags of grated cheese to go on sale so I can pop several in the freezer for occasions like pizza. In the summer, we make tomato sauce to freeze in eight-ounce containers. Small cans of plain tomato sauce also work in a pinch, so are useful to keep on hand.

For one large fourteen-inch pizza crust: