Want a great pizza for under three bucks any time you feel like it? Meet: your home oven and a stupidly simple recipe.

​Careful. I might be on a harangue. I’ve stumbled onto nonsense and horse hockey. I got angry. You’re gonna laugh. There’s a new myth thriving in Social Baloney Land. Ready? “It’s cheaper to eat out than it is to cook meals at home.” As the trolls like to say when speaking webernet-ese, BWAHAHAHA!
 
I am now launching a counterattack on this pernicious gift of dirt gargle. Ready?
 
I guarantee you can make a 12-inch homemade pizza for under three bucks.

ABOVE: A small pizza I made several years ago, using no special oven, for about one dollar's worth of ingredients.


You can make a sub-three-dollar pizza that tastes better than almost any pizza you can buy.
 
It requires no significant capital investment in hardware.
 
All it requires is your innate smarts, some simple ingredients, a little patience, and the desire for a big ol' homemade flavor paroxysm that spins your head around so fast, all the pepperoni flies off in every direction.
 
I had my own head spun around with this new and ruinous eating-out philosophy. It’s not good. And it made me realize I’m shirking my Free The Pizza responsibilities.
 
It’s fun to talk about high-end pizza expeditions (which I had planned to do today). But the “Eating Out Saves Money” crowd cured me of that for the moment.
 
 
Our founding principle here is anyone can make pizza at home, an act that is cheap, easy and lifechanging.
 
So here’s what’s going to happen:
 
We’re going to show you how you can make a great pizza with a) no specialized equipment and b) at an ingredients cost of under three dollars.
 
Yes, $3.00.
 
For me, this series of weekly rants and raves began three years ago as a way to support my award-winning bestseller, Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have.
 
That book was an effort at home-oven pizza evangelism. And yes, that’s home ovens, not home pizza ovens.
 
 
You do not need a pizza oven to make a great pizza.
 
Your regular home oven is just fine—and it’s easy.
 
Here’s how this effort is going to unspool.
 
We’ll talk about why you should even consider doing this—especially if you:
 
a) know nothing about pizza making or
 
b) have a $2,000 pizza oven.
 
Yes, this conversion really is as much for the newbie as for the know it all. A lot of people start by buying a pizza oven. That’s like learning to drive in a Formula One car. We have no such need for speed here.
 
 
There’s also going to be proof of concept.
 
You CAN do this thing I’m talking about, and today I have photographic evidence.
 
Then, next week, we’re going to make what I believe is the ideal pizza-on-the-cheap.
 
As I’m showing you today, homemade pizza requires little to no investment in equipment. And you will make the best pizza you can imagine at an ingredients cost of under three bucks.
 
And if we all have fun doing that?
 
 
Then there will be a third installment.
 
We’ll make some other surprising pizzas in cheap ways you never expected—with even less effort and low overhead.
 
But why? In the name of St. Anthony The Abbott (patron saint of pizzamakers), WHY is this even happening?
 
Don’t I have better things to do?
 
Don’t my faithful readers (you know who you are) have more important pizza challenges in their lives?
 
Probably.
 
 
But I also believe in the depths of my being that if you can make a pizza at home whenever you want, it makes you very happy.
 
And there is nobody of any experience in Free The Pizza’s devoted, pizza-loving cult membership who doesn’t agree.
 
And can’t we all use more happy right about now?
 
Plus, being pizza happy is a far, far more fun place to be than pizza-oven dependent—or worse, DoorDash dependent.
 
(In case you’re one of those misguided, eating-out economists, it isn’t less expensive to eat takeout food delivered by DoorDash, either.)
 
 
But most of all, this is happening because I detest the spread of utter BS that costs anyone anything.
 
It’s even worse when it happens to my friends and it’s a cruel idea that costs them money—or worse.
 
Yes, I know even people who’ve been led down the primrose path to believing in crackpot technology conspiracies like water-engine electricity generation. It has cost them dearly in time, money, heartache and marital discord—all of which a good pizza can help salve, just by the way.
 
 
Let’s start by answering the most basic of questions: What is pizza, anyway?
 
The Peter Reinhart answer to that question would probably be: Pizza is bread with something on it.
 
That’s good, but I’m also speaking historically. This is significant.
 
Historical fact: pizza is a food of the poor.
 
And we’re talking not just any poor, but the dirtiest of the dirt poor.
 
 
The Lazzaroni of old Naples were a ragged underclass of street dwellers.
 
The Lazzaroni came about during The Age Of Revolution. They had staunch political views, and they were prone to mob violence (especially if the price was right).
 
They were named for their superficial resemblance to the Biblical beggar Lazarus. Lazarus was a wretch clothed in rags who endures as a symbol of marginalized communities, divine favor and reversal of fortune.
 
The Lazzaroni drafted off of that image for better or for worse. Theirs was a gig economy. They were known a) as cheap and ready labor for whatever dirty job was available, and b) as budget diners who subsisted on The Original Pizza Diet. (That’s kind of a contrary plan to the Atkins Diet.)
 
 
That pizza has evolved from bare sustenance for ragged street people into an artisan food with a luxury price tag is deceiving.
 
In addition, homemade pizza has exploded—but the homemade-pizza conversation seems dominated by high-priced pizza-oven mania.
 
Here’s the hard truth: you can make a great pizza without owning anything sold to you as pizza equipment.
 
I’m about to show you a great pizza that was made using only two tools: a cast-iron skillet, and a small bamboo cutting board.
 
The ingredients cost for this pizza was about one dollar.
 
As for the skillet and the cutting board, I’ve owned them both for over 20 years. No cash out of pocket.
 
 
Next week, I’ll show you an even better pizza made fresh that’s 12 inches in diameter.  
 
Compared to the 8-inch pizza, that’s about twice as big in area. It will be made on a new 14-inch cast iron skillet that cost about $23, using a wooden peel that cost about $15.
 
Assuming you have a home kitchen with an oven, you can stop right there at those two capital investments and make great 12-inch pizzas for the rest of your life.
 
It will be better pizza than what a lot of those pizza-oven buying hardware geeks are making in their expensive ovens.
 
That’s because pizza is easy. Pizza ovens are hard.
 
 
Here now, the “proof pizza” in question.
 
I made this pizza a couple of years ago because I wanted to prove that what I’m talking about is viable.

This pizza doesn’t cost a lot to make.
 
It does require that you have patience and a touch of courage.
 
If you’re already a pizzamaker, I challenge you to make this pizza because it’s a little like practicing scales if you’re a musician.
 
All successful musicians practice their scales. It’s the foundation of everything else they do in music.
 
Wynton Marsalis is a world-famous trumpet player, he has nine Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize For Music, and he’s the only musician ever to win the Jazz and Classical Grammy categories in the same year.
 
According to Google Generative AI (and you know how reliable that is), Mr. Masalis has said he has a strict regimen of practice which includes scales.
 
 
This pizza is much easier to do, and is the foundation of everything we do as pizzamakers.
 
It’s good practice, and it’s a reminder of just how simple pizza really is.
 
As humans, we tend to complicate things.
 
Even me, who bangs the drum for simplicity (I practice that drum daily), even I have a whole pile of pizza tools—which are helpful, but not required.
 
Anyway, let’s take a look at this one-dollar pizza.

​I admit, the raw pizza is not my prettiest project.

But as the scientifically inaccurate saying goes, “Shape has no flavor.”
 
SIDEBAR: I just Googled “Who says, ‘shape has no flavor.’
 
It seems that Google blames me for that.
 

​Good news: I searched again using an incognito window, and the answer was more general and did not include Free The Pizza.
 
Now I feel better.
 
And yes, that pizza in the photo looks like it’s sitting on a pizza peel. (That’s the wooden paddle thing that you use to move a pizza into the oven.) It’s not a peel.
 
That pizza is sitting on an 11-inch by 15-inch bamboo cutting board, probably from Bed Bath & Beyond. (Remember them?)
 
That bamboo cutting board is where I assembled the pizza, and that’s what I’ve used to launch it. When it’s not putting pizzas into space, it is used as for cheese service or as a charcuterie board.

The above image is the raw pizza in the oven after launch.
 
That pizza is on top of an upside-down cast-iron skillet that preheated for about 30 minutes. I got it free about 20 years ago.
 
You may already have a cast-iron skillet in your kitchen. If not, there are cheap skillets to be had. Thrift stores are one option. There are also some affordable cast iron skillets on Amazon.
 
Next week, I’m going to talk a out one of my favorite deals in cast-iron skillets. Yes, it’s available at a big-box store you might hate. But at the price, it’s worth sacrificing your standards for just a brief moment.
 
The result will be the potential for a pizza as big as 14 inches that makes your head spin. (Don’t forget all those pepperonis flying around the room. Think of the orange grease spatter!)
 
​And here now, the one-dollar pizza that amazes your friends and makes them believe you are a pizza deity.
 
Yes, it’s just a cheese pizza. But that pizza is THE test pizza for pizzaiolo proficiency

 
Yes, it’s only 8-inches in diameter. (It's sitting on a 9-inch pizza serving tray. You do not need one of those.)
 
But look at it. It looks like a real pizza. It’s got some desirable char on it. (That’s not burnt. It’s called the Maillard Effect. That dark color is little shots of big flavor.)
 
Here’s a shot of the “crumb.” (That’s what pros call the inside of the crust. The outside is called the “crust.”)

 
The crumb is open and the crust is crispy and chewy. The cheese is melty and delicious. The sauce is herby and umami.
 
If you look closely at the crust around the edge, you can see little blisters. You will not see those micro blisters on most commercial pizzas.
 
Those micro blisters represent more flavor. They are the result of cold fermentation, which is the result of leaving the dough alone in the fridge for three days.
 
This pizza tastes like no pizza you’ve ever had.
 
It tastes better. That’s because it’s a great pizza made by you.
 
How about that.
 
 
Great pizza is about transformation.
 
We’re transforming benign ingredients into a dopamine-inducing flavor bomb.
 
And when you make a pizza like this at home, it transforms something else.
 
It transforms you.
 
You become a pizzamaker, and you can’t believe you’ve done it.
 
And not only is it cheaper than eating out. It has incalculable value because of what it shows you about your own power to Make. It. Happen.
 
Join us next Saturday for the recipe and the method for an even bigger fantastic pizza.
 
And if you want to subscribe for free so you get that material in your email, just click here.
 
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A lot of big-time professional artisan pizza makers once made their first pizza in a home oven just like yours. You can do it, too. My weird little award-winning book is one way to make it so. The book is about how to get from zero to pizza using the oven you already have. Besides learning to make great pizza, there’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than the print editions and has links to instructional videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​​