# How expensive is it to make a whole food pizza?



## MERTON (Oct 21, 2007)

it needs to be somewhat healthy and not made with any unwhole grains or unwhole other foods. i'm looking to get a healthy 3,000 calories for about $2 ($3 at most). is this possible?


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## miniman (Oct 21, 2007)

I'm not sure what you mean by no unwhole foods. Is this for you or for a commercial venture?

You can certainly make pizza dough with wholemeal flour. I'm not up to prices in your area, but with some local research, you should be able to identify toppings you can use. To keep the calories down, make your own tomato sauce, use mainly veg topping and lean meat if you want meat. You will also need a low fat cheese or use a pretend cheese such as quark based product.

I suggest you look at the prices in your local market, together with a calorie book and you will be able to identify how possible this is your locality.


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## Callisto in NC (Oct 21, 2007)

Pizza is not cheap to make because of the cheese and the dough and the toppings.  Veggies are pretty low in calories, so you wouldn't get the calories from veggies.  Cheese is high in calories, but I'm not understanding the "unwhole" thing either.  JMO, $3 for 3000 calories using whole foods seems a little impossible.


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## Michael in FtW (Oct 21, 2007)

Yeah, this whole "unwhole" foods thing has me confused, too. 

What a "whole food pizza" will cost depends on things like where you live, where you shop, what brands you buy, and what your ingredients are. I'm afraid only you can go to the store and figure that out.

Again, as for the calorie count - it depends on your indredients. You might find this Nutrition Data of some help in figuring it out for things that don't have nutritional data listed on a label (like tomatoes).


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## keltin (Oct 21, 2007)

Are you saying $2 to $3 for a whole pizza? That’s impossible. 

Just buying a slice of pizza costs 2.29 to 2.99.

To make your own, you have to buy the flour which is about 3 dollars. Then the wet ingredients, then the sauce ingredients, then the toppings.

Toppings alone can run 12 dollars or more. A block of whole milk cheese is 2.59 in my area, and you have to grate that yourself.

If you buy bulk, and freeze it, and then make lots of pizzas, over time your per pizza cost will drop, but I don’t know that you’ll ever get to the 3 dollars or less per pizza mark.  But 2 – 3 dollars per slice is perfectly reasonable.


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## BreezyCooking (Oct 21, 2007)

I'm assuming you mean $2/$3 per slice?  Or two slices perhaps?  Because otherwise, I fear you are barking up an impossible tree - at least if you plan to use high-quality & tasty ingredients.


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## keltin (Oct 21, 2007)

Only 99 cents for the whole thing, and at 8 slices, it's 12.3 cents per little slice!


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## auntdot (Oct 21, 2007)

I seems to me there are pizzas and then there are pizzas.

The other day we bought a Costco pie for about $10 with pepperoni (am not suggesting that for Merton, making a point I hope).  Now I can assure you that Costco does not pay more than 5 bucks for the fixings, and if the pizza business is like any other food business the cost of ingredients is probably no more than $2.50 or so (I have been told by pizzaria owners that their ingredient cost is ridiculously low).  Aside from Costco, we get mailings from Domino's, Papa John's, etc. all the time for pies for 10 or 12 bucks.

Now these ain't great pies, they certainly are not prepared with 'whole' foods, and these places buy in bulk.  But they do have calories, boy, do they have calories.

So my guess is the average home cook could make a pizza of 3000 calories for less than five bucks.  Agreed no one may swoon when eating one, but you could put on toppings such as onions, olives, and maybe even a bit of cheap sausage. By the way this assumes one is using as a cost basis only the actual price of the ingredients used, if you use half an onion for topping you add one half the price of the onion.

Having said that, we do make our own pizzas from time to time and they cost substantially more than $5 - lots of cheese, heavy of the toppings.  Yum.

But I have to agree with those who believe Merton cannot do a 'whole' pizza for anywhere near 2 - 3 bucks, particularly not a very sumptuous one. I can buy no name flour for not very much, cheap tomatoes in a can, some really cheap cheese, and so on.  But none of the stuff I would make a cheap pie with is anything close to 'whole'.

Sorry Merton, but I doubt you could.


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## MERTON (Oct 21, 2007)

whole foods... 


for example: kraft cheese is made in a chem lab apparently. i came to this conclusion by looking at the ingredients. real cheese conisite of some enzyms and some milk and mayb 1-3 other ingredients. kraft chees has a list of ingredients so long that it's tall as the packaging. just look at the difference between tilamook and kraft the next time you go to the store.

i want the pizza made out of real food. nothing that's been degerminated or anything else. and nothing made of chemical subsitutes. i want real food. the kind that would have existed even a couple hundred years ago.... not something that modern chemistry has brought into being. 

another example: real lard vs partially hydroginated vegetable oil.... or whatever it's called. i'd rather have the real lard.


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## BreezyCooking (Oct 21, 2007)

So go to it Merton.  Knock yourself out.  Just don't expect it to cost you $2 or $3, or for folks here to do your homework for you & knock out a recipe for you.  Most, if not all, folks here have made their own pizzas - either from scratch or semi- scratch - but asking them to try to put together what you're asking is a bit much.

Let us know what you turn up with.


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## keltin (Oct 21, 2007)

MERTON said:


> whole foods...
> 
> 
> for example: kraft cheese is made in a chem lab apparently. i came to this conclusion by looking at the ingredients. real cheese conisite of some enzyms and some milk and mayb 1-3 other ingredients. kraft chees has a list of ingredients so long that it's tall as the packaging. just look at the difference between tilamook and kraft the next time you go to the store.
> ...


 
Those ingredients you see are mandated by the government, and they are the scientific terms for additives such as citrus acid (juice from a fruit) or salt (sodium chloride) that aid in the preservation of the material. For things to last a long time on the shelf, they need additives to stop the growth of harmful bacteria. Look at all the many people and posts here about how everyone is trying to figure out how to make pepper or garlic infused oils at home.

It can’t be done. Homemade oils have a shelf life of 7 – 14 days if stored in the fridge, shorter if not. To do it commercially, you need access to microbial inhibitors and acidifiers (all things with big names) to keep from making a big ole batch of botulism…..and those additives have a big fancy scientific name. Then again, so does everything we eat! Check this:

I’m thinking for lunch I’m going to have a bowl of lactuca sativa with solanum lycopersicum, and strips of meleagris ocellata prepared in an aqueous sodium chloride solution prior to the intiation of a conductive thermal energy transfer. All of which will be topped with piper nigrum, sodium chloride, and an emulsification of impure dilute acetic acid and lipids.
Uh.....salad with lettuce, tomato, grilled turkey, salt, pepper and a vinaigrette! 

By using the scientific names for ordinary items, it sounds freaky, but that is only if you aren’t versed in the lingo.


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## Michael in FtW (Oct 21, 2007)

All foods are composed of a mixture of chemicals, elements and compounds - if you break them down (like keltin said) you wouldn't recognize them. And, you can recombine some things together to get the same nutritional value but better cooking results - like using unbleached white flour and adding back in some wheat germ for pizza dough - pure whole wheat flour is a little heavy to be leavened the same by yeast. Some things are extracted from one food and used in other applications for their specific qualities ... you might see something like *lecithin* listed as an indredient in mayo, other emulsions, or non-stick cooking sprays .... but, since eggs don't have ingredient labels - you'll never see it listed as a naturally occuring phospholipid.

While your ambitions may be admirable ... the price reality isn't. Food products are processed in bulk for the mass demand - so when processed in the "olden" ways - well, it's going to cost more. Heck - compare the price of the same brand of something canned that is regular and "low sodium" and see which one costs the most. 

You also might want to look for some books at your local library .... I know Yuell Gibbons had a couple, and there are the FoxFire books, and you might also get some good ideas from the pre-1975 issues of Mother Earth News.


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## GrillingFool (Oct 22, 2007)

Last time I made a pizza, using a premade crust, with Pepperoni, sausage,
2 cheeses, sauce, mushrooms, onions, pickles, peppers, olives, beef and 
black olives, it came to slightly more than I could order 2 pizzas on special 
from Papa John's. 
I am betting if you did the Whole Foods thing, you'd be looking at a per slice
cost of about $4.00 minimum, not including time cost making it.

Which, if you really don't care about cost and just want fresh and unpreserved,
really doesn't matter. Give it a whirl and see if it tastes better.

We are currently eating with no sugar, few packaged foods, no yeasts, no vinegars,
no condiments, no fermented goods, no fruits and few high carb foods. It is a lot more
work to make sublimely tasty foods, and our food cost has gone up. 

It is definitely a trade off situation... that uber-healthy pizza might not be worth it.


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## MERTON (Oct 27, 2007)

keltin said:


> Those ingredients you see are mandated by the government, and they are the scientific terms for additives such as citrus acid (juice from a fruit) or salt (sodium chloride) that aid in the preservation of the material. For things to last a long time on the shelf, they need additives to stop the growth of harmful bacteria. Look at all the many people and posts here about how everyone is trying to figure out how to make pepper or garlic infused oils at home.
> 
> It can’t be done. Homemade oils have a shelf life of 7 – 14 days if stored in the fridge, shorter if not. To do it commercially, you need access to microbial inhibitors and acidifiers (all things with big names) to keep from making a big ole batch of botulism…..and those additives have a big fancy scientific name. Then again, so does everything we eat! Check this:
> 
> ...




that's funny.... i'm eating some cheese now that was made of milk, pepper, salt and enzymes. those preservatives aren't necessary. they just make stuff last longer so the company can waste less.


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## keltin (Oct 28, 2007)

MERTON said:


> that's funny.... i'm eating some cheese now that was made of milk, pepper, salt and enzymes. those preservatives aren't necessary. they just make stuff last longer so the company can waste less.


 
Cool!


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## Callisto in NC (Oct 30, 2007)

MERTON said:


> that's funny.... i'm eating some cheese now that was made of milk, pepper, salt and enzymes. those preservatives aren't necessary. they just make stuff last longer so the company can waste less.


I would have to assume that's something you paid a pretty penny for and is fairly local to you from its starting point.  Not everyone lives near a dairy and not those preservatives aren't so the company can waste less, it's so people don't get sick from eating spoiled food like they did at the turn of the last century.


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## Michael in FtW (Oct 31, 2007)

MERTON said:
			
		

> that's funny.... i'm eating some cheese now that was made of milk, pepper, salt and enzymes. those preservatives aren't necessary. they just make stuff last longer so the company can waste less.


 
Actually - the enzymes are not added as _preservatives_ ... they are required to convert milk into cheese! The proteolytic enzymes in rennet cause the milk to coagulate - causing it to seperate into curds (solids) and whey (liquid). Cheese is made from the solids. The salt and pepper are for seasoning ... I've never seen a cheese with enough salt to make it a preservative.


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## GotGarlic (Oct 31, 2007)

MERTON said:


> that's funny.... i'm eating some cheese now that was made of milk, pepper, salt and enzymes. those preservatives aren't necessary. they just make stuff last longer so the company can waste less.



Or so the consumer can keep it longer without it going bad.


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## Bilby (Nov 1, 2007)

I really can't comment on prices but over here Margherita, Hawaiian and Aussie pizzas are popular and have minimal toppings, which in turn keep the prices down. A Greek pizza (cheese, spinach, onion, tomato, garlic, feta, olives) may also fit the bill.  An Aussie is just egg, bacon, cheese, tomato and base - one egg, one or two rashers, a tomato, handful of cheese.

Presumably you would have some of the basic ingredients on hand so you wouldn't perhaps need to factor them into your out of pocket cost, only the real cost.  Depends which angle you are aiming for.  For example, I could make all of the pizzas there from what I normally have on hand, with the exception of the spinach and feta, so that would be the only out of pocket expenses for me. 

One of the good things about pizzas is that you use up things that you have leftover in your fridge/pantry. That helps keep the price down.  Otherwise as someone else said bulk is about the only other way to keep prices down, other than growing your own ingredients.


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## Caine (Nov 1, 2007)

MERTON said:


> it needs to be somewhat healthy and not made with any unwhole grains or unwhole other foods. i'm looking to get a healthy 3,000 calories for about $2 ($3 at most). is this possible?


 

This could be done, but you'd have to buy all your "whole food" products from wholesalers, and plan on putting out a couple of hundred pizzas a day for about a month. Then you could average the cost to around 2 or 3 bucks American per pizza. A standard large cheese pizzeria pizza costs about a buck to make if you're dealing in volume. In fact, back in the day, we used to use a take-out pizza business as a front for illegal poker games.


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