What's The Best Frozen Pizza?
Crust, Sauce, Pepperoni Put To Test
UPDATED: 8:23 pm CST December 31, 2001
CLEVELAND -- Friday night is a great night to have pizza at home. Pizza is big business and frozen pizza is a growing piece of that pie. But which one tastes the best? 
Consumer Reports said pizza should taste like it was freshly made. Taste testers evaluated frozen pizzas, including ones from Freschetta, Digiorno, Tombstone and Totino's. There were 16 cheese and 12 pepperoni pies in all. Testers sampled slice after slice. A high-quality crust was just one of the things they looked for. "Better pizzas have cheese that tastes like mozzarella and is a little stretchy. It has sauce that's well balanced with fresh-tasting herbs and spices, and pepperoni that's flavorful, not greasy," Connie Corbett with Consumer Reports said. Tasters said that the worst things about a bad pizza was sauce that was gel like or wasn't very tomatoey and cheese that was bland or wouldn't melt in your mouth. "Some frozen pizzas had crusts that were soggy, doughy, stale-tasting or greasy. Some had pepperoni that was all dried-out," Corbett said. In the end, the frozen pizzas that rose to the very top had crusts that rise when you bake them. Digiorno and Freschetta topped the lists, with testers giving a slight edge to the Freschetta pies. The Freschetta pepperoni pizza, as well as the Freschetta regular cheese and its cheese pizza with a stuffed crust, have a slightly chewy, Italian-style crust and flavorful cheese and sauce. And like pizza you get from the big chains, they taste freshly prepared. A tip for baking the pizzas at home -- if you are making self-rising crust pizzas, bake them right on the oven rack. Testers said you don't need any foil.
Consumer Reports said pizza should taste like it was freshly made. Taste testers evaluated frozen pizzas, including ones from Freschetta, Digiorno, Tombstone and Totino's. There were 16 cheese and 12 pepperoni pies in all. Testers sampled slice after slice. A high-quality crust was just one of the things they looked for. "Better pizzas have cheese that tastes like mozzarella and is a little stretchy. It has sauce that's well balanced with fresh-tasting herbs and spices, and pepperoni that's flavorful, not greasy," Connie Corbett with Consumer Reports said. Tasters said that the worst things about a bad pizza was sauce that was gel like or wasn't very tomatoey and cheese that was bland or wouldn't melt in your mouth. "Some frozen pizzas had crusts that were soggy, doughy, stale-tasting or greasy. Some had pepperoni that was all dried-out," Corbett said. In the end, the frozen pizzas that rose to the very top had crusts that rise when you bake them. Digiorno and Freschetta topped the lists, with testers giving a slight edge to the Freschetta pies. The Freschetta pepperoni pizza, as well as the Freschetta regular cheese and its cheese pizza with a stuffed crust, have a slightly chewy, Italian-style crust and flavorful cheese and sauce. And like pizza you get from the big chains, they taste freshly prepared. A tip for baking the pizzas at home -- if you are making self-rising crust pizzas, bake them right on the oven rack. Testers said you don't need any foil.Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
