No to long ago store bought frozen pizzas would easily make their way into my shopping cart on grocery day. I loved having the convenience of just popping a pizza in the oven on nights I did not feel like cooking.
As convenient as a frozen pizza is most store bought brands come at a price in both cost and health. Sure there are inexpensive options however most have a long ingredient list filled with many chemicals and additives I can barely pronounce. And yes there are healthier versions but not without a hefty price tag.
Good thing there is a solution – create your own homemade frozen pizzas!
I am so excited to share this with you. Originally, I started making these frozen pizzas a few weeks ago. I wanted to share them then but needed to make a few more tweaks before I posted.
Some of you may wonder why you should put together a frozen pizza when making a homemade pizza is already so easy to do. My answer is this. Yes preparing homemade pizza is easy but not as easy as just taking an already assembled pizza out of the freezer and popping it in the oven. It does not get better than homemade convenience foods my friends.
However, it is not just about making it easier for me when I don’t feel like cooking. It is to help my husband out with dinner when I am not home to cook. I work 1-2 nights a week and if my husband does not have meals that are incredibly simple to prepare he will be ordering out. And when I say simple I mean all he has to do is turn on the oven or microwave. He thought these pizzas where nothing short of genius – it doesn’t take much to impress him.
These pizzas are easy to make and taste better than anything out of the frozen section.
This post is more of a “How to” post rather than a recipe post. You can use any of your favorite pizza dough and sauce recipes. And please experiment with toppings. I just did cheese and pepperoni to start with but skies the limit! I can not wait to see all the different topping combinations I can turn into frozen pizzas.
In the future, as I create them, I will post more frozen pizza recipes.
How to Create Your Own Homemade Frozen Pizza
Just in case you don’t have a pizza dough or sauce recipe I will provide you with the ones I use. Both of these recipes are adapted from The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook: A Master Baker’s 300 Favorite Recipes for Perfect-Every-Time Bread-From Every Kind of Machine. Honestly, if you are looking for a cookbook for your bread machine this is the one to get. I absolutely love it and use it all the time.
Semolina Pizza Dough Recipe
(This recipe makes one large 17 x 11 inch pizza crusts, two 12 inch pizza crusts, or four 8 inch pizza crust)
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups warm water
- 3 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 1/3 cups unbleached white flour I use King Arthur
- 2/3 cup semolina pasta flour I use Bob’s Red Mill Semolina Pasta Flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ¼ cup freshly grated parmesan
- ½ teaspoon dried minced garlic
- 2 ½ teaspoons bread machine or active dry yeast
Instructions
- Place all the ingredients into your bread machine according to the instructions that came with it. Program for dough or pizza dough cycle, press start. **if the dough is too wet add flour 1 teaspoon at a time until it forms a round smooth ball. If it is too dry add 1 teaspoon of water until it forms a round smooth ball. Let it work a little bit first before you add anything.
- Divide into the number of portions you want and let the dough rest for about 20 minutes.
- Stretch and roll dough into the shape you would like and use as directed in your pizza recipe. Also, at this point, if you are not using it right away the dough can be frozen.
Easy Pizza Sauce Recipe
This recipe is enough for 1-2 12 inch pizzas depending on the amount of sauce you use.
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
1 6 ounce can tomato paste
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon dried minced onion
½ teaspoon dried minced garlic
1 teaspoon brown sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Step 1. Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer. Let sauce cook for about 15-20 minutes. If it gets too thick add a little water to thin. Use as directed in your pizza recipe
Homemade Frozen Pizza Instructions
These instructions are just for one pizza. However, to get the real convenience benefits, I recommend making a few of these at a time to have ready in the freezer.
Ingredients
1 12 inch recipe for homemade pizza dough
pizza sauce
mozzarella cheese
pepperoni
Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stretch the dough out to fit a 12 inch pizza pan. Precook the dough for 7 minutes. Let it cool for 3 minutes then remove from pan and place on baking rack to cool completely.
Step 2. Add sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. **Please note that the sauce should be cool or cold when assembling the pizza. Place back on the pizza pan, put in freezer, and flash freeze for 3-5 hours. If you are making more than one pizza then you can put the other pizzas on any baking pan.
Step 3. Take out of the freezer and wrap a few times in plastic wrap. Label and freeze.
Step 4. When you are ready to eat preheat the oven to 375 and bake for 20-25 minutes or until done.
There you go friends. Homemade frozen pizzas! Now if you have been doing this for years and have lots of advice, tips, and recipes to give us please share.
Let me know if you make these! Who knew frozen pizzas could get me so excited 🙂
FishMama says
I’m just as excited as you! I’m thinking wrapped minis, stashed in a bagel or bread bag would stack nicely, and be great for lunches.
Tammy says
Jessica thanks so much for stopping by my blog. I made some minis today for lunches this week. Life is so much easier with homemade foods in the freezer 🙂
Lindsey says
when you freeze these have you ever put them on a pizza pan in the freezer?
Heather says
I love this idea! I can’t wait to try it.
Laurie says
Great idea!! I make my own dough and sauce but never thought of freezing the pizza. This is going to be great….for baseball and volleyball nights…just add a salad!! Thanks for the great idea!
Traci says
Love this idea but I don’t have a bread machine…can the dough recipe still be used or does it need adapted? Thanks for all the work you do to make life simpler for the rest of us! I’m very inspired by your ideas. 🙂
Tammy says
Hi Traci. I actually have never made dough without a bread machine so I am not exactly sure. However, I am sure the ingredients in this recipe can easily be adapted to making it by hand. If you do make this by hand let me know how it turns out. I will try to do a little research for making pizza dough by hand and see if there is a big difference.
danielle says
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_pizza/
I’ve used this several times for home made dough, i make it by hand with the help of a hand mixer in the beginning
Clara says
Here is my pizza crust recipe that we use. I don’t do mine in bread machine.
I’m interested in adding the Parmesan and garlic
Brittney says
My husband IS hard to impress, but he said these were delicious! I was able to get 6 big individual size pizzas and 2 bigger ones (enough to feed two people) out of the dough. We made pepperoni, mushroom, green pepper, and onion ones. Next time I will try to make bbq chicken!
FYI-Withoug catching any sales, the cost per pizza ended up being about the same as one of those Totino’s frozen pizzas ($1.35). For fun, you should check out the ingredient list of one of those pizzas compared to one of yours. I didn’t even know it was possible to shove that many chemicals into one thing!
http://www.generalmills.com/Home/Brands/Pizza/Totinos_jenos/Brand%20Product%20List%20Page
Eileen says
What is the cooking time for the small pizzas?
Kate says
What a great idea, I love to make pizza! I would love for you to share them (and any other creations) at my new linky party starting this evening “Pin It and Win It Wednesday” @ www.cheapcraftymama.com!
Laura@live-love-scrap says
These look fantastic! About twice a month, we have frozen pizzas on a Saturday movie night. These look way better than the ones I buy at the store!
Honey Geiger says
Hi, I was reading through your post… I am super excited to find your website and look forward to checking out all that it has to offer. I have 4 kiddos and LOVE freezer meals and convenience, and though I have seen and thought about making homemade freezer pizzas, I have yet to do it. I am super excited to try this, and was wondering if anyone found the sauce makes the crust soggy at all? I read in one of my foodie research binges that if you put the cheese first THEN the sauce on top, then all of your other toppings, including more cheese if desired, that the crust wouldn’t get soggy. I was just wondering if I need to worry about that or if these come out crispy? Thanks again for the blog of endless info!
Tyra says
So I tried this! Yea!……..What if I assembled and froze my Pizza, but forgot to bake the crust first? can I save the pizza? Or will the crust be doughy and the toppings burnt?
Thanks!!!
Tammy says
Maybe try to thaw a bit first before baking it. That should work. Let me know how it goes.
Skye says
Seriously, seriously impressive stuff!
I got a bread maker a few months back, so far the only things I have really tried are bread (of course), rolls, and some finger food items. I usually buy my pizza bases from the supermarket and will put my own toppings on and freeze 2-3 pizzas at a time. My husband said he wasn’t that happy with the bases from the supermarket because they were never thick enough and I agreed with him. The ‘light-bulb’ moment occurred when I realised I now had a bread maker (!!) and off to Google I went. Your recipe was the first one I came across and I was so impressed with how the base looked in the pictures that I decided I would make it. I had just finished my first lot of dough in the bread maker and my husband and I were having a serious discussion about whether we should blind bake the base to prepare it for freezing when (another light-bulb moment) we had another look at your web site and found the guide to freezing the pizza. The pizza base looked absolutely AMAZING as it baked away for the 7 minutes. As much as we wanted to just go ahead and eat the pizza tonight I already had something else lifted out, so I have put the completed pizza in the freezer and we will eat it tomorrow night. Once we have eaten it we can can see what kind of adjustments we would like to experiment with (such as using some garlic infused olive oil, or Italian herbs etc in the base). Also, I used bakers flour instead of the standard supermarket flour so am not too sure if this will make the base more dense. Thank you for your recipe, although I haven’t tasted it yet, if it tastes half as good as it looks than it’ll be a winner!
Kristine says
I was wondering how many points plus there is in the whole recipe? I love the recipe but needs points to figure it out for dinner!! Thanks!!
Melodie says
How long can these be frozen for?
Tammy says
At least 6 months 🙂
Dayna says
I’m so glad I found this! I was on $5 Dinner today and found pizza pockets that we just ate for lunch! I’m so excited to be able to freeze them for quick lunches, but nothing is more exciting than finding a way to freeze a pizza for a day when you need something quick (like grocery day)!!! Thanks for posting this!
Ryan Williams says
Thanks for recipe! I prefer fresh pizza, but this really help since i need make a lot of small pizzas and it’s just impossible to make them at once. Again thank’s for sharing knowledge!
Tomato Basil Pizza says
I am thrilled to have found your website. I tried making a homemade frozen pizza and loved it! Last night my husband and I both had meetings in the evening and I threw in a frozen pizza I made. I used the homemade sauce you recommended, and added cheese, basil, onion, and tomatoes. I’ll definitely be making more, and am excited to make the frozen bean and cheese burritos as well! Thank you for your great suggestions!
Melissa says
I made 4 of these for my daughter. I work late almost every day, so she can just pop these home made pizzas in the oven. She likes them. After making these, I ordered a set of 4 mini pizza pans from amazon so I can make these look more like the store brand. Thanks for all your recipes!
Sara says
I’ve spent the better part of today browsing this website and your blog… I’m so excited you have done this… Thank you!
I’m wondering if all bread machines are pretty similar…? What kind do you have? I’m not a big techie, so simplicity works best for me. I’m looking forward to making my own pizza crust and sauce, rather than continue using the processed stuff I’ve been feeding my family weekly.
Tammy says
Hi there! Thanks so much for finding and reading my blog. So glad you like it. I have a real old one that my mom had in her basement 🙂 I put a recommendation on my kitchen essentials that gives the latest version of my bread maker.
For the most part I would say bread machines are relatively similar. Some are bigger and have more features. I guess it depends on what you are looking for. You do sometimes have to play around with recipes to get them just right. ON the kitchen essentials page I also recommend the Bread Lover Bread Machine Cookbook. It is super helpful and has many great recipes – I have used a couple pizza dough recipes from it.
Good luck! You will love having a bread machine.
doris says
brilliant. thanks for sharing!
Karissa Sjaarda says
I’m borrowing a bread machine from a MOPS friend to make these. We love pizza in our house and this is going to make life SO MUCH EASIER and SO MUCH PIZZA-IER.
Karissa Sjaarda says
We made this last night, and put the dough on a cookie sheet. It was WAAAY to much dough. I love carbs (I usually eat my husband’s crust because he loves the meat toppings) and couldn’t finish my pieces. There was way to much dough–“deep dish”, but with dough, not cheese. 😛 Not to give up, we’re making the dough again today and putting it on two cookie sheets.
Linda says
I’m new to making dough in a bread machine and today I made your recipe for pi doughbfrom your how to article. This is a general question about yeast. My dough rose to the window of the bread machine! It was a beatiful sight to behold! I took it out and punched it down and then I wrapped in saran wrap to keep until I make dinner and it keeps rising. It’s a lovely thing! But I used fast acting yeast. should I have used just regular fliescmans yeast? that way it is rising less? Or is it ok for pizza dough to be this poofy and active? Hopefully it will be a fabulous crust tonight. I absolutely love your blog! You could paste my face on your before photos and my story is identical to yours.ni hope my story ends as well as yours!
Amy k says
I used a different dough recipe (whole wheat crust) but followed your baking/freezing instructions. The dough did not get done even after 35 minutes of baking. Should I bake the crust more before freezing? Was it the recipe I used? If you have any suggestions or ideas I would love to hear them. This was very convenient but I wasn’t pleased with my results. Thanks!
Charity says
Thank you, THANK YOU for the recipe. We love it. I made it tonight for the girls in my youth group and they LOVED it. One of the girls said, “I don’t usually like other peoples’ pizza, but this is really good”
It’s also amazing with pesto sauce, mushrooms, and olives – my daughter’s favorite pizza. Still freezes well.
Alicia Schmitt says
Hi! I LOVE this idea! Since you encourage counting calories and tracking food, what is the calorie count of your sauce and dough recipe? Thanks so much!
longtallvicky says
awesome recipe ….I made it slightly differently though….. using rapeseed oil instead of olive oil, and 2 cups of wholemeal flour, 1 1/3 white instead of 3 1/3 white……..i used 1tsp of honey instead of the sugar and only 1tsp of salt
and it was fantastic!!!
** as a footnote, i always swap white flour for half wholemeal half white, (less) honey for the sugar, rapeseed for butter and half the salt in all my bread machine recipes and the bread is amazing…..oh and throw in some seeds during the first mix…. 🙂
keep posting tammy, my kids are now 18 and 16 and ive always cooked from scratch but you have given me soooo many ideas to save time…..i love your site 🙂
vicky says
omgooooodneeesssss…just cooked the ‘frozen to oven’ version of this, with mushrooms, pepper, red onion and your shredded mex chicken on, and it was awesome, wow, soooo good…just a pointer for us Brits reading your post, I used 2 cans of chopped toms and a good squirt of tom puree instead of the ‘1 28oz can tom sauce and 16oz tom paste ‘ in the recipe for the sauce (which didnt mean anything to us over the pond, sorry) and it was amazing….just let it reduce down a bit and do everything else to the recipe….never ordering pizza again!!! 🙂
flora says
can anyone help! I made a pizza dough using the bread machine…I par baked it, wrapped it up well and I froze it without toppings. I want to know if I should thaw it before I add the toppings in the day I need to make tje pizza or can I put the toppings while it is frozen ? At what temp would you cook it and how long. Iparbaked mine for 4 -5 minutes at 450. I would really appreciate your help. thanks
Lindsy says
This is amazing pizza dough. Tonight was my second time making it but this time I did more semolina flour in place of parmesan cheese and omitted garlic. My reason behind that was because in used half the dough for cinnamon rolls and the other half for a cookie sheet size pizza. So good!!! Hubby said there is no need to search for the perfect pizza dough recipe.
Christie says
I sprinkle on cornmeal and kosher salt on the crust a prebake for 7 min. Love the crispy slightly salty texture! Love the idea of garlic and Parmesan in the crust, can’t wait to try,
Analyn says
Yes! Finally a decent, easy to make pizza sauce!!!! Will definitely make this pizza sauce. Good thing I found your blog. I’ll be making pizza bagels later this eve and freeze some of them for easy breakfast or snack.
Melissa says
I use my tried true pizza dough recipe and homemade pizza sauce recipe, but used your technique for your par baking, flash and then complete freezing method… Just made a few changes…
I thawed the pizza completely, heated the oven to 475 for over 30 minutes, brushed olive oil around the crust and baked for only 8 minutes! The result was just incredible…