Tightwad Wednesday - Stain Recipe & No-Knead Pizza Dough

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Melissa
Filed Under Tightwad Wednesdays

Each week, I will test out two tips from the The Complete Tightwad Gazette, and on the following Wednesday I’ll review how they went and evaluate if it is worth my time/effort/money to continue with it.

Both challenges were not too bad this week. I had high hopes for both but only one passed the test, and the other didn’t quite make the grade.

The Stain Recipe

I found the following “stain recipe” from p.274 of The Complete Tightwad Gazette. Eric and I have a problem with finding the occasional grease stains on our shirts. It looks clean but when we put it in on we see some dark spots. I’ve tried Shout and those other products but they don’t work very well on the spots. I thought this recipe might be worth a try.

What a mess! We chose one of Eric’s old shirts for the experiment just in case it went awry. Because we were only were trying it on one shirt I divided the recipe in half. I soaked it like the instructions said and the next morning I awoke to a disturbing sight. It appeared some of the color bled from the shirt. Hmmm. The shirt still looked ok but the reddish water was unsettling. Why was it red when the shirt was grey anyway? Ahhh, the mysteries of laundry. I’m very glad we used this an old shirt.

Looks like evidence not laundry! I put the shirt in the laundry (a full load, of course) and waited for the results. As you can see it didn’t completely get rid of the spots but it did get rid of most of them. The results might improve if I tried it again but with the color change in the sink I’m not sure if I want to. The shirt doesn’t look significantly lighter but I think I noticed a slight change in color. It could be nothing and just my imagination but I don’t want to take a chance.

Less of a mess… I don’t think I’ll be trying this again. It’s pretty cheap I suppose but still not worth it to me. If it worked like a charm I might be able to overlook the potential color bleed issue. But since it didn’t completely remove the stains I will keep looking for a better alternative. If you want to try this at home make sure not to mix colors. Better safe than sorry.

Eric says he will wear the shirt again now that the stains are less visible. Classy.

No-Knead Pizza Dough

Amy lists a pizza dough recipe titled “Thick And Chewy Pizza Dough”. She mentions that she got the recipe from The Food Processor Bread Book. She says:

Jim can make two cheese pizzas for under $1 each in less than 20 minutes of hands-on time. How?

By using a food processor she doesn’t have to knead the dough and it makes for a quick pizza. I love making pizza and regularly make my own dough so when I saw a recipe that didn’t require much time proofing or kneading, I was skeptical and hopeful at the same time. All my other recipes require at least 5 minutes of hand kneading and 40 minutes of rising. How would this one turn out without all that work?

Thick And Chewy Pizza Dough from The Complete Tightwad Gazette (p. 310)

1/2 to 3/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F.)
1 package (1 tablespoon) dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine 1/4 cup of the water with the yeast and sugar. Stir to dissolve the yeast, and let stand until bubbly, about five minutes. Put the flour, oil, and salt into a food processor, and process about five seconds with a steel blade.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and process about 10 seconds, or until blended. Turn on the processor and drizzle just enough of the remaining water through the feed tube so the dough forms a ball that cleans the sides of the bowl. Process so that the ball turns around about 25 times.

Put the dough ball onto a 14-inch greased pizza pan or large cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap or a bowl, and let stand 10 minutes. Pat the dough out so that it covers the pan, leaving a ridge on the edges. (Or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, spin the dough in the air a few times.) Spread with pizza sauce, and add the cheese and toppings.

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the cheese is bubbly.

Pressed out dough This dough was disturbingly easy to make. I followed the instructions and sure enough, a ball of dough formed in the food processor. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I pressed out the dough using my pizza pan as a guide. It felt like normal dough but it wasn’t as “elastic” as I’m used to.

mmmm, eat up! I dressed it up using my BBQ Pork Pizza recipe (I’ll share that one soon) and faced my first issue. It said to cook it in the pizza pan. I have a pizza stone and prefer the way it bakes pizza so I wanted to use that. Eric reminded me that the test would not be as accurate if I varied from the recipe so I relented and baked it in the pan.

At 15 minutes it still looked pale underneath so at 18 minutes I pulled out the pizza and examined it. It browned nicely on the edges but didn’t brown as well on the underside.

After tasting the finished product we both agreed it was “ok”. You could tell that lack of kneading and gluten development affected the final outcome. It wasn’t exactly chewy and it wasn’t what I expect from pizza dough but we both thought it was decent and worth using when time is tight.

Not bad! For the lack of effort/skill/time needed to make this recipe we definitely give it a “thumbs up”. Although the texture wasn’t as good as my traditional version it certainly wasn’t bad, especially when you consider that it took me no time to make it. I think I’ll keep this recipe around. I can see it coming in handy. It still beats the taste of the refrigerated dough and it is cheaper, too! It’s even cheaper than my traditional pizza dough recipe because it uses vegetable oil instead of olive oil.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Stay tuned for next week’s Tightwad Wednesday challenge where I will be testing out:

Bread-Crumb Cookies p.132
The Cheapskate Postal Scale p.115

Comments

7 Responses to “Tightwad Wednesday - Stain Recipe & No-Knead Pizza Dough”

HistoricStitcher on October 18th, 2007 6:20 am

I highly recommend using Dawn dishwashing liquid to remove grease stains from clothes.

My family is heavily into bicycle-riding, and as a result we often get grease stains (big ugly black marks) on our clothes, including our pricey racing jerseys!

I dicovered quite some time ago that if I put a drop or two of undiluted Dawn (original blue…) on the stains, left them overnight, and then laundered them, it all comes out. Sometimes it takes two treatments and/or a little rubbing, but it works like a charm, is extremely cheap, and doesn’t require anything paricularly special.

This does not work the same with other brands of dish liquid. Most others are too dilute to cut the grease properly.
Melissa on October 18th, 2007 12:55 pm

Hi HistoricStitcher!

That is a great idea! I actually have some of that Dawn on hand so I’ll have to try this as soon as I get a new load large enough to wash.

Now THAT is a cheap and easy stain solution. Maybe I’ll do a follow up post using the same shirt :-) Thanks again!
Stephanie on November 20th, 2007 10:37 am

I also was going to recommend dish detergent. I use the Aldi brand most of the time it does the trick.

The pizza looks wonderful!
Melissa on November 21st, 2007 9:18 pm

@Stephanie - Unfortunately we don’t have an Aldi near us but the local store brand isn’t bad. The pizza is actually decent and really simple. If you try it, let me know what you think about it!
Kelly(new comment) on February 23rd, 2009 3:08 pm

I’ve been making the pizza for years, and I have made some minor adjustments. I usually let the processor turn the dough about 35 times and I let the dough rise for a minimum of 20 minutes–the longer it rises, the easier it is to work with. I also precook the crust for a bit before I put the sauce and cheese on it, that way I don’t have the underdone bottom. Overall, it is my families favorite pizza recipe!
Janet Sichau(new comment) on August 5th, 2009 6:51 am

When Tightwad Gazette first started I was just beginning my family.. My then sister-in-law shared some baby clothes that she had in storage from my nephew. They needed stain treatment badly as they had been stored ..not so clean…for a while .. We are talking food stains on onesies.. mostly.. The Tightwad recipe was an absolute hands down charm !!
I kept a bucket going for soaking for a long while.. I have shared the recipe with many friends. More recently I had a house fire … and now am in need of the recipe yet again… Thanks for making retrieval of the recipe so easy.. My book and recipe burned in the fire !!
Tracie(new comment) on September 22nd, 2009 9:00 pm

I have read other places that this stain remover is best for pastels or whites only, that it can cause dark colors to bleed. Looking at your pictures the shirt you used looks dark, perhaps that was the problem. Maybe if you tried it with only lights or whites you would have better success.