Hmm. Let’s say the dough is close to free if you stock flour etc.
A pound of cheese - light for a full size pizza - is going to be at least $4-5. I don’t stock mozzarella so that means buying a half-pound or so at $6-8 a pound. Cheddar runs about $3 (a third or so of a 2-pound brick). More likely a pound and a half or more but let’s stay with $5.
If you stop there or go with nothing but staples like onions or garden veggies, you’re probably right. But any meat or specialty toppings are going to start to add up. Half a pound of hamburger is a buck; same in sausage is probably two. Pepperoni is $3-4 for a fairly light spread.
And all that assumes you have the bulk stuff already. Buying any or all of those ingredients means either buying overage quantities you might not normally use for anything else, or paying too much for things like 8-ounce cheese packages.
I may be a little high at $20, but unless you’re in a well-stocked, well-prepared kitchen and want to make only a very basic pizza, cost is going to be on a par with a commercially made one. Close enough that you have to be a real gourmet or just wanna do it for it to be an advantage.
No diss; if someone likes pizza enough to invest in the steel and stock ingredients, it’s undoubtedly worth it. But the cost and results I can get from a dozen numbers on the wall, weeded down from fifty, are pretty tough competition.
You must be on a very tight budget; unless you’re going whole-hog and finding imported 00 flour, organic San Marzano tomatoes, fresh buffalo milk mozzarella, etc… pizza ingredients are pretty cheap, with the possible exception of whatever salumi you decide to throw on it- it can be expensive, depending on how much and what kind.
Also, my gas bills are in the ballpark of $60 a month, and that’s including the water heater, house heater, stove and oven. I can’t imagine that a hour and a half worth of heating it up to 400 seriously impacts that number all that much.
I was going to defend my purchase, but others have already done so. However I would like to add some other observations. If you like to cook - and some people, such as me - really do, it is not 100% about the money.
Very often when you make something at home, you are not doing so simply because of economics. Much of the time when you make something at home you do so to upgrade the Quality of the product. I also enjoy woodworking, and you could easily buy a set of bookshelves from Lowes or HD made of melomine and laminate much MUCH cheaper than you would pay for for the solid oak lumber alone. Factor in the cost of a shop full of power tools and electricity to run them, and those shelves are considerably more expensive than the Lowes/HD junk. But my grandchildren may one day be proudly using the ones I built (unless printed books become completely obsolete.)
If your life is measured strictly by money than I feel very sorry for you.
Wow. You use a lot more cheese than I do on a pizza. For a 14" pizza I use about 6-8 oz. Pizza styles are different with some using maybe a bit more cheese, and some using none at all, but a pound seems like a lot for a single pizza, unless it’s a 20" pizza or something.
My costs are like this for one 14" pizza:
Dough - about 10 oz flour - $1
Yeast - $0.05
Tomato sauce (6-in-1 brand) - $0.50
Cheese - 8 oz - $4
Italian Sausage - 8 oz - $1
Gas for the oven - $0.50
Oregano - $0.10
Garlic - $0.25
So I get about $7.40 for a simple sausage pizza. Add another buck if you want a half pound of button mushrooms or another pound of sausage on there. Around here a 14" thin crust with one ingredient is about $14-$15. And if you do a cheeseless pizza (and there are plenty of great cheeseless pizzas out there) you’re looking sub $5 per pizza level.
But like Otis says, it’s not all about the money, anyway.