The Scotch.io site has a tutorial they've posted showing how to prototype a site quickly using Laravel and its built-in server/SQLite support.

If you are a seasoned Laravel developer, you know the usual project setup drill that involves creating a new project, a fresh database, and adding a virtual host entry to Apache.

If you are starting from scratch, the Apache and MySQL installation can take some time and slow things down for you. However, I will show you how you can jump start your Laravel development without Apache and MySQL.

The tutorial shows you how to use the internal PHP server to host the application, run a Laravel site inside it and integrate SQLite as the database. Each section comes with some example code and the commands/configuration you'll need to make the system work. They also take a "deep dive" into Larvel's serve command and how it bootstraps the Laravel instance for the PHP built-in server. The post ends with a look at switching back to MySQL and a comparison of SQLite vs MySQL (as well as using SQLite for production).