More pizza reviews

This one is the "Freschetta PizzAmore' Hand Tossed Style Crust Pepperoni Duo Pizza".

This is a Schwan pizza brand, and Schwan generally has good crusts, sauce, and pepperoni, but tends to be a bit weak on the cheese. So how does this one turn out?

The pizza slid out of the box in a little black cardboard tray. The directions say to put the tray into the oven with the pizza on it. I usually cook pizzas on a pizza stone nowadays because it provides a much more even temperature, but I was okay with skipping that for the purpose of this exercise. Looking at the pizza, it seemed a bit scant on the pepperoni, but seemed to have plenty of cheese. So I put it in the preheated oven and waited for it to be done.

Upon sliding it out, there was a pool of grease in the middle of the pizza. Apparently I underestimated how much pepperoni was on the pizza, I guess there was some hiding under the cheese. So the first thing I did was sop up some of the grease with paper towels. And the verdict is...

First off, the pepperoni and sauce are typically peppy Schwan. The cheese on this pizza would be rather lackadaisical, except for one thing: Schwan has put some parmesan cheese into the mix. It adds a pep that works well with the pep of the sauce and pepperoni. I think a smoother cheese would have made for a better balanced pizza, but if you like a peppy pizza, you'll like this.

The only real downer is the crust. It's not a *bad* crust, but it doesn't rise up above the pedestrian. The peppy nature of the toppings really call for a bready crust with a hint of sweetness to balance out the peppy toppings. This crust, however, is a fairly neutral crust that keeps the toppings off the bottom of the oven but otherwise doesn't contribute much to the pizza. The only good thing about it is that the texture is better than I expected given the thin cardboard "baking pan" that it was cooked in. Still, it could have been better.

So my final verdict is that this thing is one star short of excellent. I rate it four out of five -- if you see it on sale at your local grocer, get it. But it definitely will not surpass any good home-made pizza with a nicely bready home-made crust - though it's certainly better than the soggy atrocities you get delivered.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

A new king is crowned

No, not the Reverend. But, rather, something altogether more important: PIZZA! Today's pizza for review is the Digiorno Crispy Flatbread Pizza, Pepperoni and Fire-Roasted Bell Peppers. So what's it taste like?

In a word: Yummy.

The crust: It has a toasty taste as a thin crust pizza should have, but also has an appropriate bready taste, like a freshly-baked loaf of bread. The pepperoni is plentiful and zesty. The cheese is rich and smooth and complements the zesty taste of the pepperoni quite well. The bell peppers added an interesting flavor of its own to the mix, and the sauce was appropriately tangy and well balanced with the taste of the crust and cheese.

The only real flaw of this pizza was that the sauce was a bit skimpy in places, a thin crust pizza cannot have much sauce on it or it becomes soupy, but the sauce was not evenly distributed and there were places where it tasted a bit cheesier-breadier than it should have (that is, it fell out of balance). Still, the cheese and crust were good enough that this was not obnoxious. Hopefully they will improve their quality control on how they spread their sauce in the future to spread it more evenly. But still, even with that flaw, this is the best frozen pizza I've ever eaten -- well, other than the Digiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni, which had similar traits. Digiorno's slogan is "It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno". In my opinion, this pizza goes way beyond any thin-crust pizza I've ever had delivered, which invariably ends up steamed and limp. Definitely two flippers up!

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza Review: Red Baron Pizzeria Style

...Stone Hearth Fire Baked Crust Pepperoni Pizza Pepperoni Made With Pork, Chicken, & Beef

I wanted to like this pizza, I really did. The cheese makes a nice base, and the sauce is the typical tangy Schwan's sauce that does a great job of offsetting the cheese. The pepperoni bubbled along on top of this flavor mix adding its contribution too. The problem was the whole point of this pizza: The crust.

The basic problem is that the crust just lies there. It's too thick (and the toppings too thick) to be nicely toasty like a thin crust pizza and contribute a nice toasty taste. So it has to contribute a nice bready taste. But this crust is pretty much just missing in action. So sad to say, while this isn't a bad pizza, I cannot give it two flippers up -- it simply needs a crust that stands up and contributes, and it doesn't have that. If you want a thicker crust pizza, the gold standard is still the DIgiorno Rising Crust, and for medium crust pizzas... well, I used to have a winner, but I'll need to re-test that one next week, eh?

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza Review: Red Baron Thin & Crispy

...Tuscan Style Crust Pepperono Pizza Pepperoni made with Pork, Chicken, and Beef.

This is a good thin-crust pepperoni pizza. The pepperoni, sauce, and cheese are plentiful and well balanced, with Schwan's typically peppy sauce well present to augment the plentiful pepperoni. The cheese was unobtrusive and served well to offset the tangier tastes of the sauce and pepperoni. The crust, while not contributing as much as on a thicker-crust pizza, contributes as much as you can expect from a thin-crust pizza, with a nicely toasty flavor when cooked sufficiently. Like all thin crust pizzas this pizza is better baked towards the long end of the range -- the directions said 'Cook at 425F directly on center rack for 11-13 minutes', I cooked it for 13 minutes after the oven beeped that it was preheated and the pizza was perfect, the crust was nicely toasted and the toppings were nicely gushy and melted without being dried out.

Definitely recommended. Now my favorite thin-crust pepperoni pizza, though that's not saying much because I prefer my pizzas to have slightly more crust (it's hard to get sufficient flavor out of a crust this thin to properly offset goodly amounts of sauce, pepperoni, and cheese). But if you like thin crust pizzas with the full range of pizza taste in good balance, this pizza definitely gets two flippers up from this penguin.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza Review: Safeway Select Pepperoni Pizza

"Made with Zesty Pepperoni and a Blend of RIch Mozzarella, Parmesan, Romano, and Asiago Cheeses. Thin Crispy Crust."

Well, they got one out of four: It's got plenty of pepperoni. Indeed, pepperoni is all you can taste. That, and a vaguely chemical taste from the crust. The crust has a reasonable consistency but no taste other than the taste of preservatives and library paste. The cheese is there but contributes virtually nothing, so predominant is the pepperoni taste. The sauce is plentiful but tasteless, without the spicy tomato-oregeno taste needed to counter the salty fatty taste of pepperoni and pepperoni grease. There is very little to recommend this pizza except its price, and frankly, for the price I'd prefer to go grab one of those Little Caesars $5 pizzas. Yes, that bad.

So be thankful for this penguin's sacrifice. I starve myself all week to be able to bring you these pizza reviews on Fridays without turning into even more of a waddling waterfowl, and I have saved you from a fate far better than death, but still far worse than an edible pizza should be. This pizza is not utterly disgusting, I did not have to force myself to eat it unlike a couple of pizzas I've reviewed in the past, but it most definitely has nothing (zero) to recommend it in my opinion. Avoid.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

California Pizza Kitchen Crispy Thin Crust Signature Pepperoni

Yes, the reviews continue! This is the most expensive of the pizzas that I have purchased thus far, costing $6 at my local Safeway. Is it worth the price? Well... yes, and no.

First of all, this is a good pizza. The cheese is wonderfully cheesy and smooth and there is a lot of it, the pepperoni is nicely flavorful, and while there isn't much sauce, more sauce than there is on this pizza would utterly overwhelm the crust. The crust itself holds up quite well to the load of toppings and has a pleasant toasty taste to it. In short, now that the Red Baron folks have discontinued their "Ultimate Pepperoni Thin Crust Pizza", this is now my favorite thin-crust pizza.

But is it worth it? Well... this is a small pizza, and thin. So I guess it depends. I like a pizza with a thicker crust that adds a bready taste to the toasty taste. Still, if you're looking for a good pizza, and don't care that you're paying $6 for what's basically a one-serving pizza (if you're a penguin with a big appetite like me), this is definitely a great choice. It is still not pizzeria pizza... but it's very, very, very close, and will definitely reward rather than punish your taste buds when you eat it.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Today's pizza: Freschetta Flatbread Pizza

The whole title is, "Freschetta Flatbread Ultra Thin Crispy Crust Made With All Natural Cheese". So I preheated the oven, plunked it on the center rack as directed, let it cook for ten minutes as directed, and voila - one pizza.

As I've mentioned before, a thin and crispy crust pizza is darned hard to get right, because there simply is not enough crust to contribute a huge amount of flavor to the pizza. The usual result is that the taste of the crust gets overwhelmed by the toppings.

In this respect, Schwan's comes close, but manages to avoid perfection by one missing flavor. The crust is quite good for a thin and crispy crust pizza. It actually *is* crispy -- too many "thin crust" pizzas have a limp crust, but Schwan got this one to have a good consistency.

The "all natural cheese" was good too. It has a nice rich cheesy flavor that goes well with the toasted flavor of the crust. Think grilled cheese. Not bad at all.

And the pepperoni... well, it was a bit salty, but that's a matter of taste. Other than that, the pepperoni was exactly right for this pizza, with just the right amount of pepperoni tang to offset the cheese and toasty crust.

So what's missing, you ask? Well... the sauce. That just goes to show how devilishly hard it is to make a good thin-crust pizza. Schwan's sauce is generally tangy and tasty and offsets the mild rich flavor of the cheese nicely. But on this pizza, the sauce is basically missing in action. My suspicion is that Schwan's simply couldn't figure out how to keep the crust crispy at the same time they put a well-balanced amount of sauce onto the pizza, and so to keep the crust from getting soggy, they put too little sauce.

Close, but no cigar. I certainly wouldn't turn down this pizza if someone offered it to me, but the Freschetta Brick Oven Pizza is still the champ -- its more substantial crust allows for more substantial flavors. Nice try though. Maybe somebody, someday, will make a frozen thin crust pizza that's actually as good as pizzeria thin-crust. But that day isn't now, and my suggestion if you want a really good thin-crust pizza is to find a pizzeria specializing in that... the frozen is getting closer, but still not there.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza Review: Newman's Own

This is a Newman's Own Thin and Crispy Uncured Pepperoni pizza. Paul Newman has now shuffled off to that great Sundance Festival in the sky, but his company still keeps chugging along.

So I preheated the oven to 425 as directed, and then placed the pizza on the center rack for 11 minutes as directed. The pizza came out perfectly baked the way a thin crust pizza should be baked. One thing that is apparent, however, is that this is a quite small pizza -- that's a normal sized pizza pan that it's sitting on, and it is dwarfed by the pizza pan. Still, if it was suitably tasty I could live with that...

Now, thin crust pizzas are devilishly hard to get right. The crust is thin, so has to work hard to contribute flavor to the pizza. You must make sure that the toppings do not entirely overpower the crust so that all parts of the pizza present themselves in a well balanced way. So how does the Newman's Own pizza do?

In a word: Not well. Oddly enough, the problem isn't that the sauce or pepperoni overpower the crust, which is a common problem with thin-crust pizzas. No. The problem is garlic. Pretty much the only thing you can taste while eating this pizza is garlic. Not sauce. Not pepperoni. Not cheese. Not crust. Just an overpowering and ever-present taste of garlic, with a slight hint of olive oil taste being the only thing that makes it better than just chomping down on a garlic clove.

So: If you love the taste of garlic, get this pizza. If you love the taste of a well balanced pizza that presents the full spectrum of pizza flavors to your taste buds, on the other hand, this pizza is utter fail. Sorry, Paul, wherever you are -- your company just isn't doing you right here :-(.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Click on the 'pizza' label below for *more* pizza reviews!

Pizza for breakfast

So last night I get home and go to the mailboxes. I look to the side at the trash can and... what's that? Pizza coupons? I frantically open my mailbox and yes! Pizza coupons for Premier Pizza, a local high-end pizzaria!

So I hurriedly snarfed up all the pizza coupon fliers that were scattered around the mail area until I had a card deck of the things, and right there, on my cell phone, without even waiting to get home, called Premier Pizza and ordered a two-topping pepperoni and jalapeno for $10.95.

So after I get changed into more comfortable clothes I head over to Premier and pick up my pie. On the way out I see the cheese and pepper bins by the door. So I open up my pie to add some red pepper and... OMG. There is SOO much jalapeno on this thing! Okay, so no pepper needed. So I open up the cheese bin and... OMG! *real* freshly-grated parmesan cheese, not that powder crap! I hurriedly scatter some on my pie, close it back up, and head home.

Verdict: This is an excellent thick-crust pizza. The crust is light and wonderfully bread-like and obviously rose properly before having the toppings put on it. There is a *gigantic* amount of toppings on this thing to balance out the crust. The only weakness is that to avoid being soupy, it's a little light on the sauce to balance out the crust. Even with that limitation, this is a delicious and wonderful pizza.

And yet... yet... the frozen pizzas have gotten so good, that even this very worthy pizza is not going to get regular chew-downs by me. The Freschetta Brick Oven pizza is just as well balanced and its crust is even yummier, having a pleasantly toasted taste to go with the bready taste. And at the regular price of $21.95 for a large two-topping, vs. an average of $5.50 for the Freschetta, no WAY am I buying this pie at full price. It's good, but it's not that good. Even with the coupon, I think I prefer the Freschetta, though granted part of that is because I prefer thinner-crust pizzas. Still, if you are in the San Jose area and like thicker pizzas, Premier Pizza is definitely a great place to get some really yummy pizza...

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza comparison: Frozen vs. Little Caesar's

As you know, I did a long frozen pizza bake-off. I found that the best frozen pizzas were actually quite tasty, not at all like the stale lardy pizza-like manhole covers of yore. The average price of the frozen pizzas that I tested was approximately $5.50 apiece, so we aren't talking about 50 cent Totino's pizzas, but we're still talking cheaper than the typical $11-$15 pizzaria pizza.

Recently, however, a pizza chain called "Little Caesars" opened up a shop near where my iceberg is currently docked, and advertised a $5 "Hot and Ready" pepperoni pizza. If you go there between 5PM and 8PM, they also advertise a $6 "Hot and Ready" thick-crust pepperoni pizza. So how does this "Hot and Ready" pizza compare to the best frozen pizzas?

Well... badly.

Crust: This is actually the best part of the Little Caesar's $5 pizza. It tastes like fresh bread, exactly like pizza crust is supposed to taste. The crust on the $6 pizza, on the other hand, tastes more like grease. The crust on the $6 pizza is utterly inedible.

Sauce: Too little, and somewhat watery, without the tang of the best sauce (the tangy sauce used on the Schwan's Freschetta and Red Baron brands). The lack of sauce is especially pronounced on the $6 pizza, where the taste of greasy crust is all you can taste.

Cheese: Too little, and little flavor. Nowhere near as good as the rich flavorful cheese flavor on the Kraft pizzas (Digiorno and Tombstone). Maybe as good as on the Red Baron pizzas (Schwan's doesn't do cheese as well as Kraft does, hmm, go figure). But if so, only barely.

Pepperoni: You get maybe two pepperonis per slice. All of the best frozen pizzas had more pepperoni.

All in all, my rating is: $5 hand-tossed: Edible. Barely. And only because of the nice bready crust. $6 thick-crust: Inedible. Utterly inedible.

The one and only reason to buy one of these pizzas is if you're in a hurry and not willing to wait the 14 to 24 minutes needed to bake a good-quality frozen pizza. Otherwise, if you are wanting a thick-crust pizza buy a DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni (NOT the "garlic bread" crust one though, that one is nasty) or the Freschetta Naturally Rising Crust Pepperoni. If you are wanting a thin-crust pizza, get the Freschetta Brick Oven Pepperoni or the Red Baron Ultimate Pepperoni Thin Crust pizzas. All of those frozen pizzas are far, far, far superior to the Little Caesar's pizzas. Indeed, they are so yummy that just writing about them I'm *almost* hungry for a pizza, despite being somewhat pizza'ed out after eating pizza for 10 days over the course of two weeks. But I shall resist, because 10 days of pizza also equalled 5 pounds of weight gain. Ah well, the sacrifices that a penguin must make for science's sake...

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Frozen Pizza bake-off: Day 10

Okay, this is the last of the edible frozen pepperoni pizzas available at my local supermarket. It's a rather unusual one in that it appears to be the last-man-standing of stuffed-crust pizzas.

At one time there was a whole hoard of stuffed-crust pizzas. Cheese-stuffed, sauce-stuffed, garlic-stuffed, crap probably even catfood-stuffed. Nowdays, though, there's this one last survivor in the supermarket: Tombstone Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza (Pepperoni made with Pork Chicken and Beef) More 40% Cheese than Tombstone Original Pepperoni Pizza made with 100% Real Cheese.

So what does it taste like? Well, what do you think? It tastes like, duh, cheese. Pretty good cheese, actually. The crust does a good job of complementing the cheese too.

The other toppings are more mediocre. The sauce is plentiful but rather bland. There is a lot of pepperoni on this pizza -- they stole the Schwan notion of putting little baco-bits of pepperoni as well as round disk pepperoni onto the pizza -- but it isn't the best quality pepperoni around.

Still, this pizza has a rather pleasing blend of flavors. It isn't the Digiorno Rising Crust or Freschetta Brick Oven pizza (the two top pizzas in this contest), but it's still quite tasty, especially if you like cheese.

-- Badtux the Pizza-lovin' Penguin

Frozen Pizza bake-off: Day 9

Sadly, we are coming to the close of this series of food-like product reviews. I have only one more frozen pizza in my freezer, then I have exhausted the supply of edible frozen pizzas available at my local Safeway and Food Saver stores. Sorry, I do *not* intend to do an in-depth review of Totinos or Tony's pizzas, neither of which is edible enough to justify any more review. I also will not review "fancy" pizzas (i.e., those with meats on them other than pepperoni), which rules out the California Pizza Kitchen imprimature (which actually is a Kraft-produced pizza).

Today's pizza is the "Freschetta Naturally Rising Bake To Rise Crust Pepperoni Pizza". This is a good rising crust pizza, but the crust lacks just a tiny bit compared to the Digiorno rising crust, which is still "the" standard by which rising crust pizzas must be compared. Still, it is quite good, and has one advantage over the Digiorno pizza -- it has slightly more pepperoni. Still not enough to match the amount of sauce and cheese on this crust though. The sauce is Schwan's typically peppy sauce, used on all their pizzas, and in good quality to offset the bready taste of the crust. It is a better tasting sauce than that on the Digiorno pizza. The cheese isn't quite as good as on the Digiorno pizza though, probably because Kraft (the maker of Digiorno) is a cheese whiz.

All in all, I have to rank the Digiorno just a hair better than the Freschetta. But it's close. Real close.

My personal favorite is still the Freschetta Brick Oven pizza, which has a wonderful toasty crust. But that is more because I prefer thinner-crust pizzas. If you like thicker-crust pizzas, this is certainly a worthy pizza to honor your oven with.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Frozen Pizza bake-off: Day 8

Today's Pizza is the "TombStone Original Pizza Pepperoni Made With Pork Chick And Beef Made With 100% Real Cheese". (Whew!). Unlike the other pizzas tested so far, this did not come in a box. It came in shrink-wrap with a cardboard back and a paper front.

The cheese on this pizza is good. It is abundant and has a pleasant cheesy taste that goes well with the bready taste of the crust. The sauce is abundant but somewhat thin in taste, not the tangy sauce that the Schaum brands use. The pepperoni...

Ah yes, the pepperoni.

I was surprised to find a vague medicinal aftertaste upon my first bite into this pizza. Yet this rather nasty taste went away as I ate towards the outside crust. But then it came back again when I started on the next piece. But then it went away.

After some experimentation, it appears that this taste is the grease from the pepperoni. It runs down to the center of the pizza, which is why my first bite, near the center of the pizza, had this rather odd and obnoxious aftertaste, the taste of rancid chicken grease.

It's a pity, really. Other than that rather nasty taste near the center from the pepperoni grease, this pizza has a lot going for it, especially if you like cheese. It isn't as good as the Frescheta Brick Oven pizza, but then few pizzas are. It is, rather, a solid well-conceived well-balanced pizza... except for that rather nasty and medicinal-tasting pepperoni grease.

I have to, therefore, reluctantly give this pizza a grade of "F". It's a shame that Kraft (the maker of this pizza) cannot put a good-quality pepperoni on their pizzas. Rancid chicken grease is not appropriate for any pizza with even the vagues pretensions of being edible, and as long as the pepperoni has enough chicken fat in it to produce that rancid chicken grease flavor at the center, this pizza is disqualified from the edibility sweepstakes.

-- Badtux the Pizza-lovin' Penguin

Frozen pizza bake-off: Day 7

Yes, ladies and germs, I've re-stocked on frozen pizzas and am back in the saddle again!

Today's pizza is the Freschetta Brick Oven Fire Baked Crust Italian Style Pepperoni. This is thus far the best balanced of all the pizzas. The crust and cheese are especially good, the sauce is not quite as good but is plentiful, and the pepperoni is abundant without being overwhelming. While I still personally prefer the Red Baron Thin Crust Ultimate Pepperoni because I love the kick of all that pepperoni, I must admit that the Ultimate Pepperoni kinds overdoes it with the pepperoni -- the taste of the pepperoni overwhelms everything else. Not so with this pizza. There is plenty of pepperoni, but not too much. Unlike the DiGiorno Rising Crust Pizza, which has a great crust, but not enough pepperoni to balance it out.

One hint though -- cook it on the rack, and if the back says "baking time 12-16 minutes", cook it for the 16 minutes. Getting the crust nice and toasty is the secret to this pizza. Yes, the cheese on the edges will start looking a bit overdone. But that's okay. It's all good. You have to get the crust well toasted in order for it to balance out the flavors of the rest of the pizza, and a slightly toasty taste to the cheese on the edges doesn't hurt the taste of the pizza at all.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Want your favorite frozen pizza reviewed? Here's the ground rules: 1. It has to be a PEPPERONI pizza. Not one of them fancy multi-meat kinda pizzas. 2. It has to be available from a regular grocery store in Santa Clara CA. And 3. It cannot be a Totino's pizza! ICK! Anyhow, leave a comment if you see your favorite frozen pizza missing!

Frozen pizza bake-off: Day 6

Okay, this is the last of the first batch of frozen pizzas. There's going to be a few days delay until I get a chance to re-stock from the local supermarket.

Today's frozen pizza is the Red Baron Gold Edition Naturally Rising Crust Pizzeria Style Pepperoni Pizza (Pepperoni Made With Pork, Chicken, And Beef). Yes, that is what it says on the front of the box.

Kraft actually sued Schwan over this pizza, claiming that it is the result of corporate espionage. Apparently one of the top dudes in their pizza division quit during the development of the DiGiorno Rising Crust Pizza and went to work for Schwan for a ginormous salary (BTW, Schwan has also sued Kraft over their "brick oven" pizza, these two companies do *not* like each other, they have lawyers who do nothing but sue each other!). But Kraft needn't have bothered. Schwan's spy did a lousy job.

The fundamental problem with this pizza is the crust. It just plain doesn't do much rising, at least not when cooked on the rack (there are two ways on the box to cook it -- on a cookie sheet or on the rack -- I chose the rack for a crisper crust). The crust is a dense chewy thing that tastes suspiciously like raw dough near the middle. The taste is sort of a vegetable oil taste too.

Above that, the sauce is Schwan's trademark peppy sauce in good quantity. No problem there. The cheese is in good quantity too, and provides a good base of taste.

There is a lot of pepperoni on the top, but Schwan makes one more mistake there. In order to balance out the thicker crust with more peppy pepperoni taste, they added little pepperoni nuggets in addition to the round disc pepperoni. Unfortunately, these pepperoni nuggets are small enough that they completely dry up and taste like hard little chunks of bacon, rather than pepperoni. While it's not a bad taste (a pepperoni and bacon pizza?), if you are looking for copious amounts of pepperoni flavor having something that tastes suspiciously like a bac-o-bit go crunch in your mouth is somewhat disconcerting.

All in all, it's not a bad pizza, but in the battle of the rising crust pizzas, DiGiorno is still #1. Sorry, Schwan. You overpaid your spy. His rising crust sucks.

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Frozen Pizza bake-off day 5

Today's pizza is "DiGiorno Rising Crust Pizza" (Pepperoni Pizza). "Made with pork, chicken, and beef".

Kraft Foods (yeppers, the mac'n'cheese people) introduced this pizza back in 1996 with a gigantic $2 *billion* dollar advertising campaign with the tagline, "It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno!". They instantly seized a majority of the premium frozen pizza market from the Schwam brands (Red Baron and Freschetta), which do not have the advertising budget of a gigantic Fortune 50 company behind them.

So, is it any good? The answer is: YES.

The strength of this pizza -- indeed, its basic reason for being -- is the crust. This is a crust with the consistency and taste of a good Italian bread. It doesn't rise as well near the center as it does near the margins -- probably too many toppings pushing down on it there -- but it is, overall, by far the best crust of the pizzas I have surveyed thus far. (But don't go away, there are some more pizzas coming up that will give it a run for the money!).

Now, this is a medium-thickness crust, so it needs a suitably large dollop of toppings to balance it out. And it has them, with one exception that I'll discuss toward the end. The sauce is abundant and suitably tangy and offsets the bready taste of the crust quite well. The cheese is a bit less so, but still sufficient in quantity to provide balance to the sauce and complement the crust.

Indeed, the only disappointment is the pepperoni. The pepperoni is not in sufficient quantity or quality to properly balance the taste of the other toppings. Thanks to the tangy sauce the pizza is still very, very good. But with just a little better pepperoni, it could have been exquisite.

So, thus far, I rank this as the second-best pizza on my list of reviewed pizzas. The current leader is still day 2's entry, which did not have as good a crust but made up for it with toppings that were excellent, especially the suitably greasy and abundant pepperoni.

Still, don't go away. Who knows, tomorrow's pizza might top both of these!

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza bake-off day 4 Part II

As mentioned in Part I, there are health consequences to a diet of pizza. So beware!

Today's pizza is an old friend, the first frozen pizza ever produced that was actually edible. Before this, there was processed "food-like" pizzas that were soggy and limp and tasted ick. But for a time, this was the best of the best. Today it's sold as "Red Baron Premium Quality Classic Crust Pepperoni Pizza" and is at the low end of the Schwan Food Company's line of "premium" pizzas. So how does it fare today, all these years later, against more modern competition?

The first thing I noticed is that this is the first pizza thus far which calls for a cookie sheet. So now a little digression about pizza equipment:

My "cookie sheet" for pizza baking purposes is a heavy-duty non-stick pizza pan. Not a stone, not a sheet, a pan. The other equipment used is a large glass cutting board, a typical disc-type pizza cutter, and a metal pie spatula used to actually serve the pizza. Note that the pizza cutter never comes near the pizza pan, and the pizza pan never goes near the dishwasher -- it is handwashed after it cools down.

Now, back to the pizza: How does it fare? Well, fairly well. This is clearly now the budget entry in the Schwan Food pizza line, and the quantities of the toppings bear that out, but it holds up quite well compared to ringer #1 (the Little Caesar's $5 Pepperoni) and is still quite edible, compared to, say, the icky Totinos that I covered earlier.

Crust: The crust recipe shows its age but still does the job. It is not outstanding in any way, but it does not overwhelm the toppings and it adds a reasonable crunch and taste to the preceedings.

Sauce: The sauce is somewhat on the weak side, but the quantity is good. I would call the sauce "adequate".

Cheese: The cheese on this pizza performs its job of providing a base flavor underneath the pepperoni and sauce flavors quite well. The quantity is sufficient to provide a well balanced mix of flavors.

Pepperoni: This is where Schwan skimps a little bit to hit their price point. The quality of the pepperoni is nowhere as good as what's on the "Ultimate Pepperoni" mentioned earlier. However, the pepperoni is satisfyingly greasy and provides sufficient tang to balance out the cheese and crust flavors reasonably well.

All in all, this is a well balanced mid-range pizza. If you have $3.50 in your pocket and need pizza, you will not regret this choice. However, I do definitely prefer the "Ultimate Pepperoni" thin crust version, which provides a richer taste palate and has better-quality pepperoni on it.

And BTW, I tasted one of the pieces of yesterday's pizza just in case my taste buds were having an off day yesterday. Nope. Still tastes like library paste with vegetable oil, completely overwhelming the taste of the toppings.

So, tune in tommorrow for the *next* exciting pizza in the Badtux Frozen Pizza Bake-off!

-- Badtux the Pizza Penguin

Pizza bake-off day 4

Before we get to today's pizza, first, a slight health message from the Penguin:

One of the downsides of the all-pizza diet is roughage, or lack thereof. If you're curious about why that is a downside, eat pizza for three days straight then you will know exactly what I mean. Your, uhm, eliminatory functionality, shuts down entirely, clogged solid.

What this says is that you need to add roughage to your diet if you wish to retain normal elimination. It may seem strange to see a penguin wolfing down a salad (a very low calorie food) at the same time he is wolfing down pizza. But believe me, the alternative is far, far more painful. Thus as a true bachelor, I buy pre-mixed salad greens from the grocer and add a fine vinaigrette and, if available, a few shakes of Parmesan cheese. The result is normal lower intestinal tract functioning. The other alternative, which I employ whenever I'm not doing pizza taste testing, is to simply pile jalapeno chilis on top of the pizza. While that produces a fire at the other end the next day, lower intestinal tract functioning is NOT an issue at that point.

With that health message interlude finished, we now resume our frozen pizza testing. Check back this evening for the *next* pizza in our bake-off! What kind of pizza will it be? Well, you'll just have to wait and see, hmm?

-- Badtux the Gourmet Penguin

Frozen pizza bake-off: Day 3

Today's pizza is the DiGiorno Garlic Bread Pizza - Pepperoni.

I must admit that I am largely not a fan of thick-crust pizzas. It is very difficult to get them right. The toppings must be provided in extravagant quantities in order to balance the weight of the dough, and the dough and crust must provide a fine bready/yeasty taste, not heavy and dense and lardy. This pizza fails on all accounts.

The "thud" as this slid out onto my kitchen counter was the first warning that this was not going to be a lightweight experience. This pizza is nearly two pounds of, well, mostly dough. The toppings are scarce and there are wide margins on all four sides of the pizza.

Eating the pizza, you basically cannot taste the pepperoni, or the cheese, or the sauce. None of those are in sufficient quantity to even begin assessing their quality. What you have is the crust, which purports to be "garlic bread". The crust is infused with grease (supposed to be butter, I suppose, but it tastes like plain old vegetable oil to me), and there's garlic somewhere because I can taste it on my breath, but it isn't enough to overcome the heavy density of the doughy taste of the crust.

Really, this crust tastes like someone mixed up school paste with vegetable oil. I've tasted fine garlic breads, and this crust doesn't taste anything like them. There is no fluffiness to it, no yeasty flavor. Just flour paste and vegetable oil. Sadly, I must give this pizza an utterly failing grade. The fact that I could only eat three pieces before I quit eating in disgust is no surprise. Eating this pizza is like being back in the 1st grade again and sticking stupid stuff in your mouth. It's not as utterly disgusting as the Totino's Party Pizza that I tasted a few month's back (which was downright barf-inducing), but definitely this pizza gets two flippers down. Don't buy it!

-- Badtux the Paste-eating Penguin

Frozen pizza bake-off day 2

Today's pizza: Red Baron Gold Edition Italian Style Thin Crust Ultimate Pepperoni Pizza. (Yes, that unweildy name is its true actual name as printed on the box).

This is a round medium-sized pizza. The directions instructed me to preheat the oven to 400 degrees, then remove the pizza from the freezer and place it directly upon the center rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes. I did so.

First, let us start with its reason for existing: Pepperoni. This pizza has a lot of pepperoni, both round disks and diced chunks. According to the label, this is beef and pork pepperoni. The result is suitably tangy and greasy, requiring very little crushed red pepper to make it palatable to Cajun penguin tastes. The quality seems slightly less than that of the preceding day's Digiorno pizza, but it makes up in quantity what it might lack in quality.

Next, the weakest part: the cheese. Folks, there just isn't enough cheese on this pizza. It is completely overpowered by the tangy pepperoni and sauce. Unfortunately, I suspect that an amount of cheese sufficient to cope with this much pepperoni would be altogether too much for the light crust to cope with.

The sauce is suitably tangy and in sufficient quantity to nicely complement the tangy pepperoni.

The crust is rather puzzling. It is crisp and has a somewhat toasty taste. Still, I will rate it one star above the preceding day's DiGiorno, in that its taste manages to complement the rest of the pizza nicely.

All in all, a good pizza, with no rancid or stale taste and good ingredients. I will give the DiGiorno a slightly higher rating because of the DiGiorno's excellent balancing of the sauce, cheese, and pepperoni equation, but for $3.65 (on sale at Safeway), this pizza certainly presents a fine meal or two for the discerning bachelor. The only disappointment is the poor showing of the cheese. You might consider a bit of shredded mild chedder in addition to the mozzarella that comes with this pizza to give the cheese just a touch more presence to deal with all that sauce and pepperoni.

-- Badtux the Rotund Test Penguin