In my first PIZZA NIGHT Pizza post, I proved to myself and the world that making your own pizza on a regular basis is easy, inexpensive and much, much better than serving store-bought pizzas to your family. My children (boys: 16 & 11), however, beg to differ and asked on a regular basis when we were going to start buying frozen pizzas again because they missed the easy lunch option. So instead of lamenting the lack of appreciation for my 'back to basics' efforts, I came up with a way to have homemade pizzas available to my kids for their hobbit-like need to eat several meals a day.
First you have to make the dough (click on link in first sentence). I've started making a double batch of dough on PIZZA NIGHT since all of the ingredients are already out, the oven's already toasty, etc. Instead of dividing the dough in half as you would for the regular pizzas, divide it into four little balls. Roll these out to only 10" circles. Why 10"? Well, that's the size of the gallon zip-lock freezer bags that you'll need to freeze your lunch-size pizzas!
You can keep the dough in the fridge until the next day or, while you're in pizza making mode~carry on! Bake these 10" dough circles for about 5-6 minutes. I turn the oven down to 350° to make these. I know it's not exactly the right temp after having baked pizzas at 450° but I don't want them to be overdone. Don't let them bake past 6 minutes; they'll turn out too crusty.
While these are baking, you can prepare four zip-lock bags by writing the directions on the zip-lock bag: Bake @ 400° for 12 minutes.
Once the crusts are done, let them cool down, then add your sauce, cheese and toppings. Carefully, and I do mean carefully, fit each pizza into the aforementioned zip-lock freezer bag. The pizzas should hold up well enough until you get them into the freezer. I was even able to stack mine!
And the best news: My boys were extremely excited to again have frozen pizzas and I'm happy that I didn't give in and stock up on Totino's.
Ok, I don't know why I never thought of making pizzas ahead of time and freezing them, but this is GENIUS!! Love it - can't wait to try. And I'm pinning it!
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