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> Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch This is good for different reasons, such as les

> Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch This is good for different reasons, such as less additives in your food which might be healthier in the long term, taste, and the pleasure in the activity itself, but is unlikely to help with weight loss. There is little difference in calorie content between two similar pizzas, home made and from a restaurant (assuming you’re not eating Domino’s cheese-stuffed crust style pizzas).

nebulous_two 5y ago
If you compare the same pizzas restaurant vs. homemade then sure, but learning to do it well allows you to modify everything to suit your needs. A really nice thin crust can be made with quite a bit less dough, which may then need a lot less cheese to saturate the dish. Just like that you've knocked down two of the most calorically heavy parts of a pizza!
- sgtnoodle 5y ago
  Neapolitan style pizza baked at high temperature is actually extremely sensitive to excessive topping. Too much sauce or fresh mozzarella, and there will be too much liquid for the center of the crust to cook properly. I'll typically only use maybe 3 tbsp of tomato sauce, and aim for 50% of cheese coverage by area if using hand cut mozzarella cubes, or 80% coverage if shredded. My typical dough recipe has 150g of flour and 5g sugar per pizza, which is about 550 calories. Let's say 250 calories of cheese. Raw tomato sauce isn't even worth counting. So 800 as a baseline for one pizza. Fully loading it with pepperoni might bump it up to 1000. A few months ago I was trying to restrict myself to 1800 calories per day. We had friends over for pizza one night, and I decided to just not worry about it and gorge myself. I counted it all up before going to bed, though, and my daily intake worked out to be about 1900.
sgtnoodle 5y ago
My point is it's good to make lifestyle changes that lead to healthier choices on average. Pizza is inherently calorie dense, and easy to eat too much of. You might as well make it a relaxing hobby that requires some effort and forethought, rather than something you order out for several times a week because you're stressed out and exhausted. Good dough takes 24 hours to optimally ferment, and requires at least a few minutes of kneading by hand. Stretching the dough, topping it, and then baking it require some focused attention. It's not a big time commitment, though. The activity, mindfulness and the delayed gratification are the healthy part. Neapolitan style pizza in particular is very thin crust, and the emphasis is on carefully chosen high quality ingredients rather than quantity. It is significantly less calorie dense than typical American pizza. Eating a whole pizza with toppings might be 1000 calories, while a single slice of cheese pizza from Costco is around 800 calories. It's also very informative to see for yourself the ingredients going into what you're eating. Buying a can of cake frosting at the store gets you roughly the same outcome as making it from scratch using a whole stick of butter and several cups of sugar, but the latter seems more likely to influence the size of the piece you take, or at least make it obvious why you feel bleh after eating it.

nebulous_two 5y ago

If you compare the same pizzas restaurant vs. homemade then sure, but learning to do it well allows you to modify everything to suit your needs. A really nice thin crust can be made with quite a bit less dough, which may then need a lot less cheese to saturate the dish. Just like that you've knocked down two of the most calorically heavy parts of a pizza!

sgtnoodle 5y ago
Neapolitan style pizza baked at high temperature is actually extremely sensitive to excessive topping. Too much sauce or fresh mozzarella, and there will be too much liquid for the center of the crust to cook properly. I'll typically only use maybe 3 tbsp of tomato sauce, and aim for 50% of cheese coverage by area if using hand cut mozzarella cubes, or 80% coverage if shredded. My typical dough recipe has 150g of flour and 5g sugar per pizza, which is about 550 calories. Let's say 250 calories of cheese. Raw tomato sauce isn't even worth counting. So 800 as a baseline for one pizza. Fully loading it with pepperoni might bump it up to 1000. A few months ago I was trying to restrict myself to 1800 calories per day. We had friends over for pizza one night, and I decided to just not worry about it and gorge myself. I counted it all up before going to bed, though, and my daily intake worked out to be about 1900.

sgtnoodle 5y ago

My point is it's good to make lifestyle changes that lead to healthier choices on average. Pizza is inherently calorie dense, and easy to eat too much of. You might as well make it a relaxing hobby that requires some effort and forethought, rather than something you order out for several times a week because you're stressed out and exhausted. Good dough takes 24 hours to optimally ferment, and requires at least a few minutes of kneading by hand. Stretching the dough, topping it, and then baking it require some focused attention. It's not a big time commitment, though. The activity, mindfulness and the delayed gratification are the healthy part. Neapolitan style pizza in particular is very thin crust, and the emphasis is on carefully chosen high quality ingredients rather than quantity. It is significantly less calorie dense than typical American pizza. Eating a whole pizza with toppings might be 1000 calories, while a single slice of cheese pizza from Costco is around 800 calories. It's also very informative to see for yourself the ingredients going into what you're eating. Buying a can of cake frosting at the store gets you roughly the same outcome as making it from scratch using a whole stick of butter and several cups of sugar, but the latter seems more likely to influence the size of the piece you take, or at least make it obvious why you feel bleh after eating it.