Recipe of the week: Homemade pizza

Homemade pizza is a dinner that I make often and is probably one of the most economical dinners in the world!

I start by grinding some wheat for the flour:

1 c. wheat kernels, ground
1 t. salt
1 T. Saf instant yeast

Mix together the top 3 ingredients.

Then add:
1 1/4 c. hot water
3 T. oil

Mix well, then add 2- 2 1/2 cups of white flour, or until the dough clings to the mixer, spoon, or "dough hook" in this case.

Let the dough rise for about an hour in a warm place. Warm your oven to 450 degrees. (HoT!!) Roll out, stretch out, or push out flat with floured hands and place into your baking pan or pizza pan. Add desired toppings and bake for 15 minutes. Easy and probably costs around $2 or less!

I use plain tomato sauce (FREE or really cheap with coupons), cheese, cut up some lunch meat ham on this one (our family thinks regular ham is too chunky on pizza) and a few olives for my husband and I. Half of this pizza is for the kids and the other half for the adults! Obviously, you could get really creative here.

Enjoy! I once read an article titled "Stepping Down to Health and Wealth." It was in an article published by Utah State University. They were basically saying that you can take a few steps "down" and become more healthy and wealthy.

It states: "To visualize the principle, draw a staircase with four to six steps. On the top step write down the most expensive purchase. On the next step, write down an alternative, less-expensive purchase, on down to the least expensive on the bottom step. Then ask, 'Can I step down one or more steps with this purchase?'

"With food purchases, for example, the top step could be eating at a sit-down restaurant. The next step down from that would be eating at a fast food place. The next step could include buying prepared food to fix at home, buying mixes to cook at home, and cooking from scratch. It is interesting to note that this step-down scenario does dual duty- as you progress down the steps toward "cooking from scratch," you likely improve the quality of the food you eat. Less processed food generally means more healthy." Taken from: Emma Eccles Jones College of Education & Human Services- Magazine- Fall 2009.

I really love the idea of this "step-down" principle and feel that's what I do when I make this pizza for dinner. It's healthy and I'm a little more wealthy by making homemade AND using coupons and sales to buy the ingredients for the pizza.

Once I made a pizza that had a full bunch of spinach, cooked and pureed, mixed into the tomato sauce. I also made it a "cheeseburger" pizza with wheat mixed in with hamburger. So, my kids got a full serving of spinach with their pizza piece + 2 versions of wheat! I hope you'll love this homemade recipe for the pizza dough and enjoy the healthy adventures you make with creative toppings!