That is a good looking pizza! But $26? I just never grokked the value of pizzarias. A few dollars worth of ingredients for low to mid twenties in price. I guess that is why there are so many of them as they must be very profitable.
I live in a pretty small town, and at one point we had four pizza places all within a 2 minute drive of each other.
I live in Canada, so the price of $26 CAD would be around $21 USD. Our costs are also higher here, and that pizza place is upscale.
Some cheaper 3 topping pizzas in my midsized city (423 000 ) might be the equivalent of $12- $18 USD!
The average owner operated pizzarias up here start in the low twenties for 14 inch no topping, and quickly get to the low thirties with three or four toppings.
The chains are cheaper, but not by much (and are pretty much junk by comparison).
This is the main reason I make my own pizza from scratch. For around $5-$6 worth of ingredients, I made two pizzas. One thin dough for Sunshine and a thick dough for me. We got two dinners out of these. Moreover, we got the exact toppings and amount of cheese each of us wanted. (Mushrooms, onions and black olives)
I was making pizza at home in 2020-2022. I had never made pizza before Jan 2020, and I made around a dozen between Jan 2020 and June 2022.
Over the past year, I’ve gone back to making it a mostly a take-out treat, around once a month, trying other people’s pizzas!
We used to get the “Take 'N bake” pizza from Papa Murphy’s, but the prices have gone up, and it no longer makes sense. I figured I already had to crank up the oven and bake it myself, might as well go one step further and make it from scratch.
And if you bought your ingredients (most of which keep really well) in wholesale quantities… it be more like $3-$4 for two pizzas that most around here would pay $60 for. All this from what is usually a minimally appointed kitchen and a bare bones front of house.
Cheese costs $35+/ lb up in Canada, so there’s no way a home-made pizza costs less than $5 to make. Mushrooms are $5/lb. Peppers are $4/lb. Jar of olives costs $3-$5. Pizza sauce in a jar might cost $5. $3-$5 for the pepperoni or bacon.
A can of tomatoes costs around $3, I can’t remember how much flour costs lately, since I only go through around 2 bags of flour a year. I’m sure it would cost me $10-$15 to make a pizza at home.
I can’t speak to Canada (but $35/lb for Moz seems crazy)… but in looking at a couple of restaurant supply sites, the whole milk moz, Bella Vista crushed tomatoes, and King Arthur 00 pizza flour came out to about $2.26/pizza when buying in case quantity.
Pretty sure you’d see the same savings on the various toppings, but I’m not gonna spend the time on that. However $2.26 ingredient cost for a 20-22 dollar pizza sure seems to put me in the ball park. (c;
I think our restaurant margins are much tighter in Canada. Very different system.
I’m realizing it should be $35/ kg, not pound, so that should have been around
$17/lb CAD for mozzarella , which is around $12.55 USD/lb today. I pay around the equivalent of $15 USD per lb got most cheese ($40/kg CAD)
I’ll double check the price of mozzarella at the store . I’m sure it’s cheaper through restaurant supply, but I am buying as a regular shopper, so I’m basing it on what I pay vs the cost of pizza.
I remember realizing take-out in Manhattan, from cheaper spots (often Chinese, Thai, Mexican, some Greek diners, Ukrainian, Puerto Rican, pizza, etc) if I factored in the cost of ingredients, the cost of the power to make it, and the time involved, was cheaper than me trying to cook dinner from scratch . Whereas right now in Canada, where I live, an order for Chinese or Thai takeout for 4 people often approached $100, and it’s cheaper for me to try to make it at home (but it’s a treat when I get takeout)
Pizza, where I live is one of those foods, where I’m not saving money to make it at home from scratch.
Any food one makes at home is going to be cheaper (with a few exceptions like A5 Wagyu or o-toro tuna, or white / black truffles where restaurants can source them at wholesale prices) than eating the same food at a restaurant only if one does not account for labor costs, as well as rent and equipment, which we all sort of take for granted when making food at home.
Heck, I know my time is precious. So, if I make even a PB&J at home, and the costs of the 2 slices of bread, the thick smear of peanut butter and jam is something like less than USD $1, the 2 minutes it takes me to assemble that sandwich is easily more than what it would cost me to buy a PB&J at a restaurant for something like USD $5.
Eating out, more often than not, is paying for convenience, if not also good food (hopefully 
)
Shrimp, eggplant, and grape tomato pie with a sesame seed-coated crust at Mama Mia
in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
n.b. I wasn’t a fan of the pizza
I am going to try Milk Street’s Poured Pizza" tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes, hopefully with a picture.
No picture. The poured crust wasn’t anything special. The sliced tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes) were nice. Not a repeater, but worth the experiment.
Yes… I saw that on youtube. After the presenter was done, it looked like one of those frozen Tortinos pizzas you buy for $1.50-$2.00. Perhaps the manufacturer does use that method to keep the costs down – more water, less flour??
I’ve tried different crust recipes and still like Adam Ragusea’s NY Style Crust.
The Deluxe slice from the 703 College Street location of Pizza Nova in Toronto , a chain with around 150 locations in Canada.
Not bad, but I like Bitondo’s and Badiali’s slices a little more!
