Pizza is one of my favorite foods, and chances are if you are reading this article, the same is true for you as well. Unfortunately, pizza usually contains a lot of calories and/or is low in lean protein. I have figured out how to have my pizza and eat it too by making it at home. I call it a ‘lunchroom style pizza’ and it is easy and affordable to make if you have the right ingredients.
The Dough
Obviously, the dough is a main ingredient. I do not make mine from scratch for a couple of reasons, with the first being the time factor. There is a store chain in western states called WINCO where they sell pre-made balls of pizza dough. I have also seen similar premade balls of dough at Trader Joe’s and Safeway. All of them seem to have the same ingredients and calories per serving, with the only major difference from what I can tell being that the WINCO dough comes in 18 oz balls and the ones at Trader Joe’s and Safeway seem to be 16 oz balls. For this article I will be basing everything off of the 18 oz WINCO pre-made pizza dough ball.
Another reason why I use the pre-made balls of pizza dough is so that I know exactly how many calories are involved. Portion size is going to be key to your homemade pizza success and help ensure that you are not consuming too many calories, which is one of the overall points of making pizza at home. I slice the ball of dough into two equal parts to make two pizzas.
From there, I roll out the dough as thin as I can reasonably get it on a sheet pan that I drizzled a little bit of olive oil on. I use just enough olive oil to help the bottom of the pizza not burn while baking (about a half of a tablespoon), but not too much as to add unneeded calories to the final product. In the picture below, I used a sheet pan that is 17 inches by 11.5 inches, although you can use any sized sheet pan. The size of the sheet pan will just affect the thickness of the dough and the size of the final slices of pizza.
The Sauce
I have made a lot of pizza sauce over the years going all the way back to my days as a teenager working at a couple of local pizzerias. Both of the pizzerias that I worked at used a combination of tomato sauce, tomato paste, and seasoning. You can certainly buy pre-made pizza sauce, but I have found it to be more expensive than what I make, and not as tasty for what that is worth. It is ultimately a personal preference decision for you to make.
To make my sauce, I combine one larger can of tomato sauce and one smaller can of tomato paste, as seen above. The ones that I use are WINCO-brand, but you can find something similar at basically every grocery store that I have ever been to. Once I have those combined and stirred up so that the paste is no longer lumpy, I add a healthy dose of seasoning.
I use a heavy amount of basic Italian seasoning that contains oregano, thyme, basil, and parsley. I also use a few sprinkles of a second seasoning combo containing garlic, onion, and black pepper. I encourage you to experiment with those spices until you get the right flavoring added to the sauce/paste mix.
What I just described makes more than enough sauce for two sheet pan pizzas, leaving leftover sauce for whatever your heart desires. Once the sauce is done, apply however much you think is best. I find that less is more for my family.
The Cheese
It is no secret that cheese contains a lot of calories, and while I will never go as far as saying that the type of cheese that I use on this homemade pizza is ‘healthy,’ I will say that it mitigates the calories quite a bit and provides a decent amount of protein. The type of cheese that I use is WINCO-brand low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese. I assume other branded cheeses fitting that description are similar, if not identical.
I find that 8 ounces of the cheese shredded up is perfect for one pizza, and thus, one 16 oz block of the cheese and one 18 oz ball of dough makes exactly two pizzas the way that I make them. That is important for calculating the calories per slice of the finished pizzas. Shred half of the block of cheese and spread it across the sauced dough, as seen in the image below.
Baking
To bake the pizza, I set the oven to 400F. I bake the pizza for 6 minutes, then check it for bubbles. Anyone who has worked at a pizzeria is probably familiar with the fact that pizza will bubble up during the baking process. Below is a picture of a pizza in my oven at the 6 minute mark with bubbles showing.
I use a fork to ‘pop’ the bubbles in the pizza at the 6 minute mark, although you can use whatever stabbing device that you prefer. I then bake the pizza for 4 more minutes and check for bubbles again, popping them accordingly. I then bake the pizza for 2 more minutes, at which point it is done after 12 total minutes of baking. Below is a picture of one that I pulled out of the oven this last weekend (you can see where the pizza bubbled up during baking!).
Slicing
Slicing may seem like a straightforward thing. However, if you are trying to know as close to how many calories are in a slice as possible, and with it, how many you can eat to stay within a certain calorie limit, slicing is very important. I calculated all of the ingredients that go into making two of these pizzas, how many total calories are involved, and so I know that if I cut each of the two pizzas into 12 slices, that each slice has between 115-120 calories and roughly 6.5 grams of protein.
If you compare that amount of calories per slice to the amount of calories in a slice of pizza at a popular pizza chain in your area, I trust that you will find that this homemade pizza contains significantly fewer calories. To be fair, the slices may not be as large, but this is how I can have my pizza and eat it too, even while on a calorie deficit diet.
Sometimes my slicing proportions get a little funky and not all pieces are the same size, so I help compensate for that by eating one of the larger of the 12 slices with one of the smaller of the 12 slices to even it out.
Additional Toppings
You can certainly add additional toppings to this type of pizza, just know that each topping will add to the overall calorie per slice number. My advice is to be very exact with your topping serving sizes so that you know exactly how many more calories they add to each slice. Hopefully this article was helpful for all of you pizza lovers out there trying to slim up. Enjoy!
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