Up until recently I didn’t make pizza very often because making the dough always made everything feel last minute and work intensive. But totally by accident, I stumbled across an awesome way to simplify the whole process!
My bread recipe makes four loaves, so I usually freeze three of them for later. A month or so ago I thought to myself, why not just freeze the dough and then have fresh bread all the time? So I did, but it didn’t work out as anticipated. Maybe I didn’t let it rise long enough, but all my bread and cinnamon rolls were turning into flops when I used that frozen dough.
“Oh well, I’ll just use it for pizza,” I thought, and here I came to find out that frozen bread dough makes excellent pizza crust! It rolls out really thin, isn’t as elastic as fresh dough (so it stays in place on the pan) and if baked at 450* turns out a nice thin crust pizza in about ten minutes. Hooray!
My recipe makes approximately six pizza crusts depending on the size of the pan, and now my go-to easy meal is pizza! We all love it. I am always amazed at how many pizza crusts Oscar can gum away into nothingness.
Maybe all of you know this already and I’m just late to the party, but if not, here’s my bread recipe, and happy pizza making!
Whole Wheat Bread
1 quart warm water
2 T yeast
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup oil
1 1/2 T salt
Approximately 5 cups whole wheat flour
3-4 cups white flour
Mix all the ingredients except flour in a mixing bowl with a whisk, or else in a mixer. Add the whole wheat flour and then start kneading in the white flour until the dough isn’t very sticky anymore and holds together well.
Let rise 1/2 an hour, then punch down and put balls of dough into 6-8 ziplock bags. Freeze.
Pull out and thaw (can be hurried up by putting in a bowl of warm water) whenever you’re in the mood for pizza and top with whatever strikes your fancy. A couple of our favorites are ranch/bacon or pizza sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni. Bake at 450* for about ten minutes.
I have a ball of dough thawing right now in my fridge. Tonight is prayer meeting at 6:30 and since we have an hour drive, we always eat supper on the way there. Pizza is a great supper-on-the-road, even with toddlers! Sometimes I’ll do ranch on top instead of pizza sauce to cut the mess down even further.
Any other tips and ideas you’ve learned to help make pizza more simple? Please share below!
Tabitha, you’re making me hungry! This sounds yummy and easy. I’ve been making sourdough pizza crusts the last while, and whether sourdough or otherwise, I’ve always liked to pre-bake my crusts. But it might be just as simple to do it all together, too. Glad you figured out something that works! 🙂
I don’t do this regularly, but really find it to be fast when I do take time to do it: make crusts and pre-bake them for 10 min or so, and then freeze in a stack with maybe some wax paper between to loosen easier when ready to use them. It’s so nice to have it all ready to load with ingredients for a quick meal and doesn’t take very long to bake, since the crust was already partially baked before. It does take so storage area in your freezer, though. Did you ever try pineapple & ham or sausage & bacon for toppings? I also like to serve pickles when I serve pizza.
Betty Joy
I’ve done sausage and bacon, but not pineapple/ham. Thanks for the ideas! Freezing the crusts sounds so time saving!