Dough for Pizza

The other day at work Mike mentioned that Trader Joe's sells ready-to-bake pizza crusts, a la Boboli uncooked pizza dough balls for $0.99. It was widely postulated that you couldn't make pizza dough from scratch for that price.

I was skeptical.

So I cracked out my cookbooks and found a couple pizza dough recipies - one from the New Basics that I use all the time, and one from a bread baking book, just for the sake of comparison. Here are the ingredient lists:

New Basics:
1 c. water, 1 package yeast, 2 T olive oil, 1/2 t salt, 2 1/2 - 3 c flour
Makes 1 crust

Bread Book:
2 1/2 c water, 2 packages yeast, 2 t salt, 1 T sugar, 2 T olive oil, 5 1/2 - 6 1/2 c flour
Makes 2 crusts

I got online and priced out ingredients at albertsons.com - choosing a supermarket brand and national brand item for each ingredient, and figured out how much each recipe would cost. I based pricing on 10 lb bags of flour and sugar, 17 oz bottles of extra-virgin olive oil, 26 oz packages of iodized salt, 1 gallon of drinking water, and 3-packs of yeast.

I was surprised to find that recipe 1 costs between $1.21/crust (supermarket) and $1.54/crust (national brand). Recipe 2 blows by the $0.99 mark at $1.74/crust $1.14/crust (supermarket) and $2.24/crust $1.42/crust (national brand). The deal-breaker is the yeast - a three-pack costs $2.19 to $2.39 - or $0.73 to $0.80 a pack. That doesn't leave much room for other ingredients with a $0.99 price cap. (I suppose I could have priced it with bulk yeast, but I use the packages myself.)

However, I typically double the New Basics recipe and divide it into three crusts. That works out to $0.81/crust for the supermarket brand products - which is, of course, what I use. (I am value minded.) So, depending on how you like your crusts, you can get in for less than $0.99 per.

A non-financial angle - if you buy premade crusts you will miss out on the visceral pleasure of kneading your own dough. I really like the silky feel and texture of fresh pizza dough when you start kneading it. (Ask Katy about it sometime - I think it worries her a little.) Is it really worth 18 cents to give that up?

I suppose in the end the question of "which is a better value" depends on external factors, primarily the opportunity cost associated with other uses of your time.

Anyway, If you are skeptical of my numbers, well, do your own research then. Or ask me nicely and I'll show you my spreadsheets.

[Edited 03 Sep 2002 - Corrected recipe 2 pricing and information about Trader Joe's pizza dough]