Here are some simple ways to make a typical pizza night into a family-focused pizza night event that will bring everyone together.
While we do pizza night at home every couple of weeks, we are choosing to not spend our money eating out very much and pizza is pretty simple for us to make at home. Sometimes I get a craving for this pizza buffet near us though. This place has easily two dozen different types of pizza and we love variety. But like I said, it’s not in our budget to eat out right now.
Pizza night at home isn’t abnormal but I think because of that it doesn’t always feel special. I usually fall back to pizza when I’m tired or don’t feel like planning for dinner. So when I realized that I was in the mood for that pizza buffet but didn’t want to make any pizza, I slowed down a little bit to think about the reasons.
Why have a pizza night?
- It’s easy. Whether it’s ordering in, going out, or throwing together the three ingredients (crust, sauce, cheese), pizza night is easy.
- I enjoy it when my family gets excited about food. Maybe it’s the Puerto Rican in me but food is one of the ways I show my family love. Whether it’s what I’m making or buying, I want it to be fun and the variety that you can get when you order or dine out satisfies that fun need.
How do I replicate pizza night on the cheap?
The first thing I needed to do was change my mind about pizza night. Pizza night doesn’t always have to be my simple go-to meal that we have when I’m not in the mood to put in any effort. Once I set myself up to be willing to put some work into the planning and execution of family pizza night, I started to be excited about ways to make it more special and intentional.
I already know how to make traditional Neapolitan pizza and I always have pizza dough in the freezer, cheese in the fridge, and tomato sauce in the pantry. So how could I make it better or how could I make more? I evaluated the ingredients in my fridge and saw that the two key protein leftovers I had were plain shredded chicken and taco meat. I also almost always have sour cream or Greek yogurt, cream cheese, and salsa on hand, so I knew I could make a taco pizza. The last question was the shredded chicken and the two thoughts I had were either chicken alfredo or barbecue chicken. I don’t keep alfredo sauce on hand but I do have barbecue sauce. Barbecue chicken pizza it was then.
Frugal Living Tip: If you make homemade pizza dough, make an extra pizza or two worth of the dough and freeze it so that you have dough on hand for an impromptu pizza night. If you don’t make homemade dough, Aldi has pizza dough balls for a decent price that you can stock up on in your freezer.
I also had home-canned peaches and peach crumble is one of my favorite summer desserts so I thought why not try to make this into a pizza too? What other varieties of homemade pizza have you tried?
Typically pizza night for us looks like pizza and maybe chips so having a variety of pizzas felt like a great start. I wanted a bit more pizza with pizza night so I also made sourdough breadsticks using Farmhouse On Boone’s Recipe: Here!
The last thing that I did was make basil tea. That’s a favorite drink of ours that I usually make for a treat and not to go with dinner. If you have a specialty drink or favorite dessert, I highly recommend adding it to the evening’s menu. In looking at the pictures from the night I remember now that I also put out leftover desserts I had made for a church event earlier in the week.
How does all this pull together?
With a little patience from the people eating and a bit more planning on my part, this went off without too much trouble. The hardest thing was that I only had one pizza baking sheet.
Frugal Living Tip: If you don’t have enough pizza pans or pizza stones, bake your crust on an upside-down baking tray or intentionally make rectangular pizzas.
I started baking off the crusts around 3 with the intention of serving dinner at 530, but we probably didn’t sit to eat until closer to 545.
Tips for making a family-focused pizza night work:
- Bake the pizza crusts first and have an area to pull them out to cool. I did four pizza crusts but did them one at a time and I got slowed down by trying to find spaces to put them when done.
- Prep all of the toppings ahead of time. I kept each pizza’s toppings ready to go on the island so that when I wanted to start baking them, I didn’t have to go into the fridge or pantry to find things that I had forgotten.
- Have tin foil ready. When my breadsticks were done, I pulled them out onto a serving tray and covered them with tinfoil. I kept them right next to my stove to stay warm.
- Enlist your people to help. I had people running in and out of the house with everything to set the table. My drinks were made ahead of time and I had hot pads on the table for when I was ready.
- Clean as you go when possible. I unfortunately was less prepared on this front and while my sink was empty, my dishwasher was not and that slowed me down. This night came with a lot of dishes from cooking and it would have been easier if I had an empty dishwasher for sure. We did use disposable cups and plates for dinner which helped.
- Plan the pizza cook time. The pizza that took the longest to cook was the peach crumble dessert pizza. I had cooked two pizzas at a time but I wish I had cooked the peach crumble one first. All three dinner pizzas took about 10 minutes to heat through but the peach one took closer to 15 minutes.
The night that I had this planned for we were watching my friends’ three kids and their dad was going to pick them up so we invited them to stay for dinner. This also made pizza night more fun because it was a whole occasion with friends. We chose to eat dinner outside which is not super common for us in July and I put dessert out at the same time as dinner which is also just not as common. What I learned is that doing things out of the ordinary helps to make the night feel unique.
Aside from taking a few photos, we all were off our devices and sat and enjoyed each other’s company. We had rankings for our favorite pizzas (the pizzas all tied but the breadsticks seemed to be the favorite option on the table) and each enjoyed a little more dessert than would usually be allowed.
Family Pizza Night was a success and something that I am excited to do again. I’ll make sure my dishwasher is empty and I’ll try to have some fun games or conversations planned for my kids, but this was a success and I am looking forward to trying different pizzas next time too. I enjoyed getting to show my family love and set up a special evening for them to enjoy even though it took a little bit of effort. What do your family-focused nights look like?
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