At the point where you're getting the dough from the restaurant, why not just get the pizza from the restaurant?
For me it's a few things.
1) the kids love putting "their" toppings on "their" quadrant of the pizza, and wow, like a lot of things in life, when you make your own there are 0 complaints.
2) You can really put premium toppings that no pizzeria would spend on our even stock.
3) You can get it fresh out of the oven, like "burn the top of your mouth (again, you dummy) cheese napalm" fresh.
4) You can put as much or as little of any combination of cheese as you like, and it doesn't have to be the powdery pre shredded dry-frozen stuff that a lot of pizza places use.
5) Really it takes like 5 minutes to dress a pizza, heating your oven up to whatever it's highest settings is takes longer.
6) You can barbeque your pizza.
7) It's usually pretty cost effective when you consider most delivery places are charging $15+ for a large (14") pizza with a few toppings. Plus you save the tip and the emissions from a delivery driver (provided you buy a few and pick them up on the way home!
You can work each biscuit into a mini pizza, top it as you see fit, and cook the lot for 8-12 mins (based on the biscuits instruction).
It was a great treat when I was a kid and I've kept it up as an adult because dangit adulting has to have some perks.
If you want top quality ham, organic tomatoes, etc, there is no restaurant in town who does that.
For $17 you can get decent dressing though.
If you put the decent dressing on top of your (great) $3 dough you bought from the restaurant, you get a decent pizza ($17 street value) for $9 spent.
> what part of the rest of the pizza-making process can you do better than the restaurant?
I have had success with heating a large cast iron pan on the stove top to ~700F, dropping the dough in that, adding toppings when it's ready and then finishing it in a broiler or well preheated oven. These guys show how it's done, without words, better than I can describe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXAW2GseICs It is pretty damn good technique. They're using 00 flour, high protein (available at Italian markets in any big city).
One thing you can do at home better than the pizza shop, however, is to use crazy good artisinal toppings, dialed in exactly how you like it.
I’d say it’s as good as the 1000 degree pizza places,
unless it's about the topping selection
Customize it to your personal liking. Tastes differ greatly re: salt, tomato variety, amount and kind of cheese, presence or absence of olive oil or basil...