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'Poor Man's Pizza' Was A True Struggle Meal From The '80s By Karen Hart Dec. 2, 2025 6:39 am EST

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Dinner from America's favorite pizza chains can be pricey, and frozen pizzas often taste like cardboard. If you're looking for a budget-friendly version of this culinary mainstay, you may want to adopt a struggle meal from the 1980s known as "poor man's pizza." This dish uses pantry staples to create a satisfying bite that can make even the pickiest eaters happy. Unlike the beloved pizza bagel, which uses marinara sauce , pizza toast, as it's affectionately called, only requires bread, ketchup, and a little bit of cheese.

To recreate this retro meal, you can use white, wheat, sourdough, or whatever bread you have on hand for your sand

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