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There there are alternatives: (1) Recently I wanted a bag of sugar. At my closest grocery store, the bag was 4 pounds instead of 5. No problem: At my next s

There there are alternatives: (1) Recently I wanted a bag of sugar. At my closest grocery store, the bag was 4 pounds instead of 5. No problem: At my next stop at Sam's Club, I got two bags, 15 pounds each. (2) Sometimes dish soap comes in small bottles. Okay, at Sam's get a gallon jug of their generic dish soap and with a funnel refill the small bottles. Same for glass cleaner, etc. (3) Pizza can be $7 to $20. Okay. (i) In a 5 quart bowl, add 750 ml water and 1 T dry yeast. Let the yeast soften. Measure 1 kg of flour. Add 1 T salt to the water, stir, add 2/3rds of the flour, stir, add the rest of the flour, mix some, and dump on a floured board. By hand mix and knead for 8 minutes. Return to the bowl, cover, and let rise to fill the bowl. Dump on the board, form in a long loaf, cut into 8 equal pieces, place each each in a covered plastic bowl, refrigerate. Starting the next day for two weeks or so, for a pizza, take one of the dough pieces, in a microwave proof plate form in a circle 7-9" in diameter, and warm in microwave for 3 minutes. Add 3 T sauce, 1/4 C shredded Mozzarella, and maybe some pepperoni, sausage, etc., place in a clean steel pan, over medium heat, covered, for 13 minutes, move to a cutting board, slice, slide to a dinner plate, add 1 T of grated hard cheese, and eat. Get the flour, 25 pounds, at Sam's, and then the flour for one pizza is about 9 cents. With good toppings, the total cost is still about $1. So, anytime, in 20 minutes, 7 of effort and 13 waiting, get a pizza faster, better, and cheaper than frozen, carryout, or delivery.

JackFr 7y ago
> So, anytime, in 20 minutes, 7 of effort and 13 waiting, get a pizza faster, better, and cheaper than frozen, carryout, or delivery. I don't know where you live, but in Manhattan your version will be cheaper, but it will definitely not be better and most likely will be no faster. Neither your stove nor your oven can match a commercial pizza oven.
- graycat 7y ago
  As I wrote, I don't use an oven! Instead I finish the baking in a covered steel pan, and this does give a crisp bottom. > match a commercial pizza oven. "Match" in what sense? What I described is different but works great. For the 20 minutes, even in Manhattan, tough to take the order, make and bake the pizza, slice it, box it, and deliver it, all in 20 minutes. For the quality, that's a matter of taste, but frozen, carryout, and delivery don't use better ingredients. Whatever strong opinions some people in Manhattan may have about pizza, for the world of pizza, Manhattan is a very tiny place. E.g., apparently all or nearly all Sam's Clubs scattered all across the US sell 5 pound bags of part skim, shredded, Mozzarella cheese, and no doubt nearly all of it goes for pizza: Pizza is all over the US and much of the rest of the world -- in comparison, Manhattan is a small thing! By the way, for delivering a pizza quickly, there is a fundamental problem made fully clear in queuing theory: The orders have to arrive essentially as a Poisson process. But the pizza shop has only fixed capacity in pizzas made per minute. So, we have random demand fed to a fixed resource. Then the pizza shop has just two alternatives, (i) deliver quickly but have a lot of expensive time where the delivery people are doing nothing and (2) delivery slowly, from a queue, where the delivery people are busy but the customers have to wait.
  - darkwater 7y ago
    You bake the pizza in a what? My Italian origins strongly disapprove this :/
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      Not OP but when I have pizza leftovers I also reheat them in a frying pan. It works pretty well :-)
    - graycat 7y ago
      So far it looks like the flour, yeast, salt, water, sauce, cheese, and sausage don't know about transgressions of Italian origins and traditions!
      - 18pfsmt 7y ago
        I think you should use a quality pizza stone, but you were unfairly treated for espousing the idea that one would choose to use quality ingredients, rather than accepting some inferior product (or at least a relatively expensive product).
        graycat 7y ago
        A pizza stone needs an oven, typically a quite hot oven, and some significantly long pre-heating. The stone gives a crisp bottom. For the actual, final baking, I'm not using an oven and am using just a common, restaurant style, all steel saute pan with a circular flat bottom about 8" in diameter. So, I get the bottom of the pizza crisp and as brown as I want. And I cover the pan to create an oven that does cook the dough some more and melt the cheese. All of this is my response to the OP about shrinkflation. I've outlined a response -- 20 minutes, 9 cents of flour, crisp bottom, sauce, cheese, and sausage of your choice, etc. My post is just in response to the OP's shrinkflation and not throwing down a gauntlet as the world's greatest pizza, better than NYC, Chicago, Naples, etc. For one, do some arithmetic on the 1 kg of flour, split 8 ways, and the 7" diameter -- get a relatively thick pizza, and people who want pizza very thin might not be happy.

JackFr 7y ago

> So, anytime, in 20 minutes, 7 of effort and 13 waiting, get a pizza faster, better, and cheaper than frozen, carryout, or delivery. I don't know where you live, but in Manhattan your version will be cheaper, but it will definitely not be better and most likely will be no faster. Neither your stove nor your oven can match a commercial pizza oven.

graycat 7y ago
As I wrote, I don't use an oven! Instead I finish the baking in a covered steel pan, and this does give a crisp bottom. > match a commercial pizza oven. "Match" in what sense? What I described is different but works great. For the 20 minutes, even in Manhattan, tough to take the order, make and bake the pizza, slice it, box it, and deliver it, all in 20 minutes. For the quality, that's a matter of taste, but frozen, carryout, and delivery don't use better ingredients. Whatever strong opinions some people in Manhattan may have about pizza, for the world of pizza, Manhattan is a very tiny place. E.g., apparently all or nearly all Sam's Clubs scattered all across the US sell 5 pound bags of part skim, shredded, Mozzarella cheese, and no doubt nearly all of it goes for pizza: Pizza is all over the US and much of the rest of the world -- in comparison, Manhattan is a small thing! By the way, for delivering a pizza quickly, there is a fundamental problem made fully clear in queuing theory: The orders have to arrive essentially as a Poisson process. But the pizza shop has only fixed capacity in pizzas made per minute. So, we have random demand fed to a fixed resource. Then the pizza shop has just two alternatives, (i) deliver quickly but have a lot of expensive time where the delivery people are doing nothing and (2) delivery slowly, from a queue, where the delivery people are busy but the customers have to wait.
- darkwater 7y ago
  You bake the pizza in a what? My Italian origins strongly disapprove this :/
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    Not OP but when I have pizza leftovers I also reheat them in a frying pan. It works pretty well :-)
  - graycat 7y ago
    So far it looks like the flour, yeast, salt, water, sauce, cheese, and sausage don't know about transgressions of Italian origins and traditions!
    - 18pfsmt 7y ago
      I think you should use a quality pizza stone, but you were unfairly treated for espousing the idea that one would choose to use quality ingredients, rather than accepting some inferior product (or at least a relatively expensive product).
      - graycat 7y ago
        A pizza stone needs an oven, typically a quite hot oven, and some significantly long pre-heating. The stone gives a crisp bottom. For the actual, final baking, I'm not using an oven and am using just a common, restaurant style, all steel saute pan with a circular flat bottom about 8" in diameter. So, I get the bottom of the pizza crisp and as brown as I want. And I cover the pan to create an oven that does cook the dough some more and melt the cheese. All of this is my response to the OP about shrinkflation. I've outlined a response -- 20 minutes, 9 cents of flour, crisp bottom, sauce, cheese, and sausage of your choice, etc. My post is just in response to the OP's shrinkflation and not throwing down a gauntlet as the world's greatest pizza, better than NYC, Chicago, Naples, etc. For one, do some arithmetic on the 1 kg of flour, split 8 ways, and the 7" diameter -- get a relatively thick pizza, and people who want pizza very thin might not be happy.