I don’t even bother making the crust. Fresh & Easy has a great pizza dough, and their sauce is more than adequate after I get done with it, so why bother doing it from scratch? Friday night is Pizza Night, and the entire point to civilization is to make life easier. After a hard week’s work, I have no desire to hassle with pizza from scratch.
Side note on those above who scratch make everything: unemployed, are you? Some of us actually have to spend most of our days toiling outside of the home, and as such don’t have the freaking time to make pie crusts and stock.
When I was a kid, my parents made pizza occasionally, and we found that local pizzerias would sell you a lump of dough for a dollar or so. This is the same lump of dough that they’d use to make pizzas, so the quality was reasonably good. (Earlier, we made pizzas from a boxed Chef Boyardee kit. The quality, particularly of the cheese, was not great, but it was cheap. Here’s a blog posting describing the kit.)
Same here. With a little forethought, it’s easy enough to fit stocks and homemade pizza dough into your schedule. Both freeze fine. That said, more than half the time I’ll use a box of stock, Trader Joe’s pizza dough or, and here’s another good shortcut I like for the crust: using that really thin Middle Eastern flatbread or even large flour tortillas. But I hate all the jarred pizza sauces. All of them. I use the Muir Glen tomatoes (usually the fireroasted variety) and add some good olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper flakes to it. Sometimes, also oregano.
Butter usually comes in 250g blocks roughly 2x2x5 inches in size. Most will have 25g markings on them, but if butter has prevously been taken off in non-25g increments that’s not very useful. I usually just weight it anyway, it only takes a second.
Of course we use tablespoons for measurement of small amounts, it just seems bizarrly antiquated not to use weights for normal quantities. Then you don’t have problems like measuring a Cup of loosely packed brown sugar when the recipe meant ‘densely packed’ or measurements like ‘a heaped half cup’.
And don’t get me started on the Australian temperature system. They use Slow/Moderate Slow/Moderate instead of temperatures. What they hell is wrong with their ovens?
My gf works 10 - 12 hours 5 days a week. I work 6 - 8 hours 5 - 6 days a week. Making, for instance, from scratch spaghetti sauce takes very little active time. And we appreciate what we eat so much more when it is. . .ya know, good.
Our bread machine makes very good pizza dough, all you really have to do is make it into a pizza shape. Then just spead a jar of pre-herbed passata on it, chuck a load of cheese and crap on it and you’re done.
More power to you, I guess. I just find that there is a trade-off that I’m just not usually willing to make. The incremental improvement in quality of the food isn’t worth the cost in time and/or effort in many cases. Add in a complete lack of freezer space and shortcuts rule the day. Maybe when I get my large kitchen back…
For the occasional baker, cup measurement works just fine. For consistency of the final product across the board, nothing beats weight measurement. Unfortunately, most recipes in the U.S. are in cups. The only way around this is to measure out the flour by the cup, weigh it, then add to the mix. If the final result is what you want, save those weights for subsequent baking.
Not to mention the fact that 95% of household kitchens do not contain a scale of any kind. I love mine, but I’m not the typical home cook in that regard.
I use a scale for all sorts of things in the kitchen, and do have notes in the recipes I use often as to how much that much flour should weigh. But American butter packaging is so convenient that I don’t usually find myself weighing it.
I’ve actually been trying to avoid using shortcuts for the past year or so. It does take more time, but you can taste the results in most cases.
One shortcut I wish I used more though: My supermarket will often have little plastic tubs of pre-chopped onions (usually red onions). Since I HATE HATE HATE HATE chopping onions, I really should take advantage of that more.
Somehow, my wife can chop an onion without stopping. But when I do it, I have to stop every 30 seconds so my eyes stop burning to the point where I can open them again. Not sure if it’s a question of sensitivity or technique though.
Even when I worked full time, I would always cook from scratch on weekends. A useful rule: cook first, drink later!
The day Crisco came out with sticks of shortening was a relief to those of us who still make pie crust. Though those refrigerated folded pre-made crusts (Pillsbury?) are perfectly adequate.
I’m curious about these American ‘pie crusts’. What exactly are they? What is the difference between these and standard (or sweetened) short-crust pastry?
I eat beef two ways: either completely raw or medium rare. For whatever reason, I think medium rare is the perfect balance of textures and flavors for steak. While blue or regular rare is fine, medium rare hits all the right spots for me. (Well, actually, I will eat it technically as “well done” for stuff like stews, braises, barbecue brisket, and the such.)
