Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Pizza Kits

We've been having homemade pizza for Friday nights a lot recently. Many weeks, we pair this with a Redbox movie for a low cost date night!

Pizza crust is like pie crust. I really don't like making it all that much.  But if I'm going to do it, I figure I should make it worth my while and make enough to last a few weeks.

Enter pizza kits.

If I'm making crusts ahead to freeze, why not bag up cheese, sauce, and toppings too?

I did pepperoni and mushroom this time around which we love but I can also add anything else I have, such as peppers or onions, if desired at the time of baking.

For freezing pre-baked crusts, I've found that the giant broccoli bags from Costco are just the right size. Extra large Ziploc bags would probably work too. I only had 2 bags so I put 2 crusts in each and then put all the little bags of topping for each pizza into one gallon-size Ziploc. So when we want a pizza, we can just grab a pizza crust and a bag of toppings and we'll be set!

For a little longer than it would take to prepare one pizza, I was able to make enough for five pizza nights--one to eat right away and four to freeze!

I've frozen homemade pizzas ready to bake, balls of pizza dough and just the pre-baked crusts. I'm looking forward to seeing how these pizza kits work for me!

What do you like on your pizza?

3 comments:

Jana M. said...

How does freezing dough before baking it affect the baking time? Do you thaw it completely first?

Jana M. said...

Oh, and thanks for your ideas! I'm looking forward to giving it a try:)

Mary Ann said...

Jana,
Thanks for stopping by! I've done it both ways-- baking the pizzas frozen and also pretty much thawed-- and really didn't notice much difference in the baking time. Bake it for the amount of time your recipe states and then see if you need to add a few extra minutes. I will note that I always par bake the crusts(about 10 minutes) before freezing so that may make a difference.

We really liked the pizza kits and hope you find them helpful as well.