Pizza on the Cheap

I make a nice inexpensive cheese pizza.  We've started giving Finn some gluten these days (!!!) and my children loved the most recent incarnation of pizza.

I buy my cheese in bulk for $2.99/lb. 

The tomato paste was about .30/can at Aldi. The pizza sauce recipe was easy and tasty! It does use a fair amount of olive oil, but I buy mine on deep sale, so it's pretty inexpensive.

This is my favorite gluten-filled pizza crust recipe.  

I'm not going to try to break down the ingredients and determine how much the pizza costs to make (maybe one day I will--no promises).  But I'd guess that it costs about $3 for two large cheese pizzas.  The dough can be mixed up the night before or in the morning.  The sauce just sits around and cooks.  I shred my cheese and freeze it so it's ready to go.....so it's a very easy meal.  

I do like to add spinach to assuage my guilt at feeding my children cheese and bread for supper, or sometimes I'll steam broccoli as a side dish.  And there's always a lot leftover for their lunches for a few days!

And now I have a vegan pizza on the cheap, too! My husband has started making his own hummus in large quantities--definitely cheap.  I press out the pizza crust, spread on a layer of hummus, spread on a layer of pizza sauce, then put the toppings on (I like to roast veggies, slice tomatoes, etc., which is not very cheap during the off-season, but is free during the gardening season!).  My husband LOVES the pizza made with hummus instead of cheese.  

Much healthier and thriftier than Domino's!