Takeaway pizza or homemade pizza? - Alternatively: "Do you hate yourself or do you REALLY hate yourself?"

[nice]

Is making a pizza yourself worth it?

I don't get takeaways often as I like knowing how my food is prepared, but I cba to spend 2 hours making it myself tbh.

 

[Judge Holden]

homemade all the time. takeaway at BEST tastes like cardboard, and even if it doesnt it will be horrifically overpriced

 

[Desire Lines]

Honestly? Takeaway. Pizza takes a lot of ingredients to make and I am a lazy fuck. There is also a nice cheap pizza place nearby my house.
(I hope none of you monsters actually choose frozen pizza)

 

[Long time lurker]

Homemade. I live in a place full of shitty pizza "restaurants". Even the ones that start out doing decent pizza eventually change ingredients and no matter where I order, they all taste the same - some ketchup like "sauce" and plastic infused with fat cheese. The dough ends up fried due to the amount of fat, unless I order crackers thin pie/NY style pizza.

I have a very simple recipe for pizza dough that I use all the time. It can even be pre-baked and frozen if necessary.

 

[AnOminous]

Homemade. I live in a place full of shitty pizza "restaurants". Even the ones that start out doing decent pizza eventually change ingredients and no matter where I order, they all taste the same - some ketchup like "sauce" and plastic infused with fat cheese. The dough ends up fried due to the amount of fat, unless I order crackers thin pie/NY style pizza.

I have a very simple recipe for pizza dough that I use all the time. It can even be pre-baked and frozen if necessary.

What is it? For some reason, even when I use recipes, my dough always turns out tasting like absolute ass.

 

[Bassomatic]

I live in an area that's renowned for it's pizza so I tend to go out, but I do admit for lazy nights I'll do Costco's frozens. They break down to like 2.50 a pizza. I'll tend to chop up some veg, olives or what not to spice it up a touch. When I am balling out of control I'll get a pizza oven in my house, they are about 16k though.

 

[Teri-Teri]

Takeaway. I'm too lazy to make one. lol

 

[Long time lurker]

What is it?

1/2kg of flour
250ml of warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast (or 10g. I just eyeball it)
~80ml of oil (I use olive oil, but any cooking oil can be used)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar (not overflowing and not too packed)

Mix the yeast, sugar, oil, salt and water and add the flour slowly until it's a smooth dough*. Knead the dough for 15 minutes or until smooth.

Let it rest, covered with a cloth for 40 minutes (or until it doubles in volume) in a warm area (I put it inside the microwave).

Divide the dough in half and open each half into a disk. It yields 2 medium (I guess) size pies. Put sauce, cheese and toppings you prefer on the pie and bake in pre-heated oven on high (250 C) for 15 to 20 min.

• A good dough feels light and fluffy (for lack of a better word). When you're kneading it, if it feels heavy/stiff, try adding a little bit more oil. Only add more water if you can't incorporate all the flour (I usually don't add all the water at once).
• You can pre-bake the pies and possibly freeze them. Unless you can flash-freeze, I don't recommend adding toppings to a pie you want to freeze as the dough will probably get soggy.
• If the sauce you choose is too liquid, there is a chance that the dough won't bake well.
• When it comes to salt, it's better to have too little than too much as it might interfere with the yeast.
• Depending on how hot it is where you are, you can use cold water. Never, ever use boiling water, though, it kills the yeast.
• I also use this recipe to bake simple bread.

One last thing, the more you make bread (and yeast-based dough), the better you get at it. So much of it is tinkering with measurements and as you get more used to working with dough you can tell what needs tinkering. It's hard to explain but easy to understand once you get your hands dirty.

* many times, if the dough is too dry, it's better to add oil than water. Depending on the flour, you'll need a little bit more or less than what the recipe calls for (this goes for water and flour).

 

[ES 148]

dominos

 

[NumberingYourState]

Mr. Jim's thin crust.

Watch the r/pizza subreddit gatekeep like the lonely overcompensators they are.

If I had to skirt the polls I'd say homemade just works for most common recipes.

 

[MidUSA]

It's possible to get homemade pizza to be better than most takeaway but it takes some work. Takeaway is good enough for me but it tends to get a bit too greasy.


There's one primary thing that you MUST keep in mind when making your own pizza, which many people miss.
Sauce -> Cheese-> Ingredients. In that order. DO NOT PUT THE CHEESE ON LAST!

Look at a pizza baker performing his craft. They put the ingredients on top of the cheese. Doing it the other way around creates a cheese layer that encapsulate the moisture and makes your pizza soggy and watery.


Secondary things to consider is, get your oven really hot. Close to as hot it can go, and heat from the bottom if possible. You can achieve a stone-oven effect by keeping a oven tray in while the oven gets warm and put the pizza on it when it's hot.

 

[Slap47]

Making pizza requires tonnes of ingredients and if I were to buy all of those ingredients I'd be required to eat pizza a lot because I can only buy those ingredients in quantities of more than I would ever want to put on a single pizza.

Perhaps I'm only able to say this because I have a good mom and pop shop nearby and my region actually has pretty great chains.

When I homecook I prefer to make heavier items that last a long time - Lasagna, a shit tonne of noodles, casserole, etc
I pretty much only like my pizza fresh or a day old max.

 

[RG 448]

Takeaway. As far as junk food goes it’s fun to make but the end-result isn’t really as rewarding as, say, frying your own chicken.

 

[XYZpdq]

I'm too lazy to clean up working with dough because seriously fuck that shit.

There was a long stretch where I'd get the basic frozen cheese pizza multipack from costco and then I'd do my own toppings.

 

[A Useless Fish]

Most Fridays I hang out with my best friend to watch silly things and eat pizzas. We're really lucky where we live, because there's a couple of really good, cheap pizza joints that live within delivery distance of us.

Also, there's a nearby supermarket where you can get fresh pizzas put together for you, that you can then take away and cook in the oven on your own. They are really cheap, but the quality of the ingredients and the dough they use is superb.

Aside from the great quality of pizza though, where I live is a complete shit hole. But at least I have pizzas to help me dull the pain as I wait for death.

 

[AnOminous]

One last thing, the more you make bread (and yeast-based dough), the better you get at it. So much of it is tinkering with measurements and as you get more used to working with dough you can tell what needs tinkering. It's hard to explain but easy to understand once you get your hands dirty.

This is probably my problem. I just haven't done it enough to get good at it. Sort of like I couldn't do over-easy eggs so I gave up on them, but it was really just a matter of practice to get them right (most of the time). I usually just use store bought dough, and some of those are actually pretty good.

Making pizza requires tonnes of ingredients and if I were to buy all of those ingredients I'd be required to eat pizza a lot because I can only buy those ingredients in quantities of more than I would ever want to put on a single pizza.

A margherita is pretty simple. It's literally just tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil.

 

[Flowers For Sonichu]

I used to make pizzas all the time when I lived in the US, but sadly I don't have an oven large enough to do it here.

A pizza stone is clutch.

My personal touch is to sub sugar with honey or agave and add garlic to the dough

 

[XYZpdq]

Oh yeah, I've ghettoed up a makeshift pizza stone using a baking sheet turned upside down and lined with foil.

 

[Joey Caruso]

If you've got a good local place then by all means, get some takeaways. They usually do better prices than the big pizza chains for better quality (unless you live where Long Time Lurker is and there's none around). Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not guilty of throwing a DiGiorno's in the oven every now and then when I can't be fucked to make anything else. One of these days I might go all the way and make one from scratch myself, who knows?

 

[antifan]

I prefer homemade but it's time consuming. Sometimes I get ambitious and make a bunch of dough and freeze it in pizza size portions, but I usually end up ordering from the little local place near my house.