Pro Chefs Blind Taste Test Every Frozen Pizza

[cheerful music] We've gathered

three professional chefs

to blind taste test every supermarket frozen pizza brand

we could get our hands on

to see which ones meet their standards.

[cheerful music ends] All pizzas

have been prepared following the cooking instructions

on the back of their packaging.

[cheerful music] DiGiorno Four Cheese

Rising Crust pizza. [cheerful music ends]

Well it's a little thick. It's puffy,

little bit crispy.

It reminds me of America,

it's like the smell of commercial cheese.

I think I know what this is. Oh yeah.

So when you're looking at frozen pizza,

you would want there to be a crispier bottom.

You don't want something that's soggy.

You want that pizza snap, you know what I mean?

When you bite into a pie.

So that when you do go to pick it up, it stays flat.

Definitely having a seasoned

crust that has fermentation notes to it.

The right amount of yeast and salt.

I would like to have a great quality cheese.

[Victoria] I want it to be a little oily

and the consistency

to be even throughout the whole entire pizza.

Nothing like dry and it doesn't melt.

Not artificial cheese, not cheese product.

I would like to have a nice tomato flavor,

have to be a right amount of acidity.

[Victoria] Enough tang that compliments the cheese.

If it tastes like a pizza

more than it does like a cheese toast,

that would be incredible.

[cymbal clashing]

It's very doughy.

The crust definitely is on a little bit of the bland side.

The fermentation time might've been a little off.

The longer it sits, the more flavor it is going to have.

So those are docking marks.

When you make a dough

that you're not gonna ferment properly,

you gotta put holes in it with a docker

so that it doesn't bubble up.

Doesn't really taste the freshness of cheese.

This doesn't remind me of like mozzarelle,

it doesn't give me that gooey texture.

The tomato, I taste the sugar.

I don't recommend it on my pizza, I don't like it.

I think that it's a little too thin, the sauce.

90% sure this is DiGiorno Rising Crust.

There's no mistaking this crust right here.

[box rustling] [Nino chuckles]

Rising Crust, I mean I called it.

Oh, it was delivered.

Four Cheese, Parmesan, Asiago, Romano.

I don't taste any of those cheeses.

I see the datum and the baking soda.

Datum is put into a lot of frozen pizzas,

which is gonna help the overall gluten expand.

I think they did a really good job at that

and that's about it.

I personally wouldn't bother.

This is akin to a criminal act.

But if it's your thing, you know,

if it gets your rocks off, go for it.

[pizza clanging] [plastic crinkling]

[cheerful music] Trader Joe's

Pizza Margarita. [cheerful music ends]

It's thinner. This one is extremely flat.

It looks like a thicker tortilla.

It looks a little rough.

[Victoria] Smell is very strong,

there's definitely garlic.

The par baked marks on these are there.

They'll par baked the crust slightly

so that the raw tomatoes and raw cheese bake evenly.

This crust is very crispy.

[Rosario] I don't taste a lot of flavor on the crust.

This crust is like, it's a fugaze.

I think that the tomatoes in this,

it's more of a paste as opposed to like a sauce.

Tomato pasty with dehydrated garlic and dry basil.

One of the things that makes Italian food so great

and pizza so great

is the simplicity of the whole thing.

Too many people like think like,

Oh, it couldn't be that easy,

so we gotta like mess around with it.

That is a very good example of that.

I think that this cheese is good quality cheese.

It melted really well.

[box clanging]

Pizza Margarita, Trader...

Trader what? Trader Giotto's?

What the, what is this?

This is not Trader Joe's, right?

They changed their name to be Italian, those guys.

Oh, product of Italia, nice.

When you think of Neapolitan pizza,

you think of margarita Pizza,

that's probably the first thing you learn.

Named after Queen Margarita.

It's the first pizza that was invented from 1889.

They represented the Italian flag,

fresh tomato, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil.

I mean this is not a margarita pizza, but.

It's not so bad. For a frozen pizza that is.

Give me Ellio over that any day,

like Ellio does a good job.

[box clanging] [box ripping]

[cheerful music] Ellio's Cheese Pizza.

[cheerful music ends] Oh, it's a square.

Is that the guy? Looks nice.

Four sides, no crust.

I would not to call that a pizza.

It's pretty terrible, but it tastes like childhood.

You'll probably die if you eat too many of them,

but you know, whatever.

[Victoria] No crispy bottom here.

Yeah, it's a little bit mushy. It's soft.

Zero fermentation on it. There's no crumb structure.

The different holes and the bubbles.

It's like akin to like eating like a bowl of flour.

The dough should be more hydrated.

The hydration will make the dough more light,

easy to digest.

It's a good robust sauce, but...

Doesn't have fresh tomato flavor.

Definitely being overpowered by some grated cheese.

The cheese doesn't even melt,

doesn't feel like good cheese.

[Victoria] When the pizza is in the freezer too long,

the enzymes and the culture at that point

are being broken down

and you're losing the flavor from the cheese.

Ah! It's Ellio's. Ha ha.

Ellio's is definitely one of the

top five childhood memories I have.

This isn't trying to be something it's not,

it's just trying to be Ellio's.

So we're straight Ellio's,

like don't come after me or anything.

Like I'm not trying to cause any problems over here.

[box clanging] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Red Barron

Four Cheese Pizza. [cheerful music ends]

We definitely have two different cheeses on this one.

I can totally see the cheddar.

What is this yellow stuff?

So the crust here, it's a little crispy on the bottom,

it has a good taste.

There is some flavor on the dough,

it's lighter than the one I tried before.

This is definitely too much cheese.

It's very cheesy pizza. What is that, four cheese?

It's very oily, greasy.

I think this is lacking a little bit of tomato flavor

just because the cheese is so strong,

I think it is overpowering the sauce.

When you put so many ingredients on the pizza,

you lose the other flavors.

It tastes like Chef Boyardee.

Ah. Oh, Red Baron.

Four Cheese. Cheddar, provolone,

mozzarelle and Parmesan.

Oh my God.

This thing has like 20,000 ingredients in it.

Eight gram of sugars.

Contains bio-engineered food ingredients. Great.

[cardboard ripping] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Amy's Cheese Pizza.

[cheerful music ends] I kind of really like

the way this pizza looks already.

Looks nice, like an emoji.

Has a really good smell.

It's crispy. Crust is very good.

Has a lot of flavor.

The mozzarella on this one is more filante.

Filante that pulls.

It's very like light on the sauce.

They cooked the tomato like a Ragu.

Tomato sauce have to be fresh,

no cooking process, no sugar.

I know there's gonna be an Amy's here.

I like Amy's. I want them to be good.

But if this is you, Amy, like I expected better outta yous.

Ha ha. Amy's.

This is organic?

So excited to see this pizza,

I tried it like 11 years ago.

It says here a hand stretched wheat crust.

The wheat flour, it's less process,

that's why it gives more flavor.

It's a good pizza, this one.

[box clanging] [cardboard ripping]

[cheerful music] Great Value

Microwaveable Cheese Pizza. [cheerful music ends]

The smell is very rich.

This definitely looks like a tortilla.

No crunch at all.

Squishy, squish, squish. It's very gummy.

The cheese stucks on your teeths.

[Victoria] There definitely is some strands

that haven't melted all the way through,

so they might be using imitation cheese here.

If I'm at a gas station in a pinch

and you hand me one of these in the middle of the desert,

I could get down with this.

I will not call that a pizza.

[box clanging]

Oh yeah. Great Value.

I don't know about any value, but.

What is this, Walmart?

Microwavable and that's probably why it's soft.

Microwavable Pizza, never had it before.

Sodium aluminum sulfates.

That's what every growing boy needs,

little teaspoon of aluminum.

I will not give it to my kids too.

I don't have it, but even.

[cardboard ripping] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] California Pizza Kitchen,

Margarita Crispy Thin [cheerful music ends]

Crust pizza.

It's nice, it's crispy, it's thin.

I like it the way it looks.

[Nino] I see the fresh tomatoes on here.

So this pizza has no sauce,

it's just chunks of tomatoes.

They can definitely cannot call margarita.

Margarita is only one ingredients, it's tomato

and not tomato and cherry tomato.

I'm super purist.

I'm third generation of- [speaking Italian]

So just let you imagine my grandfather, what he would think.

Yeah I got really excited when I saw these tomatoes,

but they're definitely not fresh

and have a little sour ting to them.

[Victoria] The mozzarelle doesn't really have much flavor.

It's not my favorite crust.

It doesn't have a lot of fermentation on this dough.

When you're looking at really thin pizza,

the whole idea is to

try to flatten it out as much as you can.

They use the docking tool on it

to make the dough more thin.

The holes on the bottom

were making sure that this dough does not rise.

Maybe I can think about California Kitchen Pizza.

[box clanging]

Oh, there you go. California Pizza Kitchen.

Never had this in my life.

They should not call a margarita.

I don't know where the tomato sauce is,

but they say there's sauce, I beg to differ.

They just closed this one by my house for good reason.

[box clanging] [cardboard ripping]

[cheerful music] Newman's Own

Thin & Crispy Crust pizza. [cheerful music ends]

The cheese is bubbling.

Wow. This one is probably the darkest one that I've seen.

This one is very crispy.

The crust has good flavor.

It's not so processed. Reminds me of pizza,

not cardboard. The tomato flavors

a little fresher than the other ones.

The cheese is great.

I love that there was a cheese pull.

[Nino] Oh, a little bit of pull.

Newman's? [boxes clanging]

Newman's Own Thin & Crispy Crust four cheeses.

Mozzarelle, cheddar, Parmesan, Asiago.

A hundred percent profits helps kids.

Well at least do 50/50.

Yeah, I would say this was pretty good.

[cardboard ripping] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Whole Foods 365

Four Cheese pizza. [cheerful music ends]

They all look the same.

It's almost like the same pizza twice.

Think like a lot of these pizzas

are made in the same factory.

We got that squishy white bottom

that we've all grown to love.

What you guys should be doing at home

is getting yourself a baking steel.

You want to get it on that baking steel,

crisp up that bottom.

Maybe throw your broiler on, finish that baby off.

There is no fresh tomato flavor here.

I definitely feel like I bit into like a garlic bread.

I don't like this one. I don't like the dough.

I think this is the most egregious dough of the day.

[Victoria] It's definitely a little gummy.

There's like just so much raw flour on it.

The mozzarella, it doesn't pull,

doesn't give a lot of flavor.

It's definitely not quality cheese.

[box clanging] Woo. Let's go.

Whole Foods market. Whole Foods.

They do have ascorbic acid,

which is a dough conditioner,

which will help the dough

essentially be able to stretch it easier.

I expect from Whole Foods

a better quality pizza to be honest.

[Victoria] I'm curious as to why

there's so many different ingredients in this one pizza.

Jeff Bezos, call me next time, we make a pizza.

[plastic crinkling] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Tombstone Original

Five Cheese pizza. [cheerful music ends]

I'm learning that every time you see cheddar,

it's a four cheese.

I think we got some cheddar cheese on here.

You cannot even close the slice, breaks through.

I'm getting really scared.

It's nice, crisp.

Kind of like slightly toasted Wonder Bread crisp.

It tastes like bland pizza dough.

I think this one here

has the best cheese that I've had today.

Just the right amount of salt, enough oil.

It pulls. It tastes like quality cheese.

The sauce is very good as well.

I love the tomato.

It's not too thick, it's not too thin.

It doesn't have any overpowering spice,

it just tastes basil.

Very reminiscent of a Tombstone Pizza

[plastic crinkles] Tombstone.

I think it's like the cheapest, right?

Or one of the cheapest out there.

Five cheese, not even four.

So with this one there is imitation mozzarella.

Fake mozzarella, I never hear that in my entire life.

Imitation mozzarella from water, palm oil, casein.

I definitely think I was fooled a bit.

Five different cheeses,

I guess they had the cheap out somewhere.

[box clanging] [cardboard ripping]

[cheerful music] Uno Chicago Style

Deep Dish pizza. [cheerful music ends]

Oh god, here we go.

This is not a pizza.

This looks like a deep dish pizza.

It's like a little cake.

So a deep dish pizza is usually cooked in a pan.

Looking at this crust,

it makes me think that this pizza's from Chicago.

It's harder to call a pizza.

Sorry guys from Chicago.

It's the best sauce by like a hundred miles.

This is real tomatoes.

Definitely with this dough

we make a cakes instead of pizza.

It almost like eats like a scone.

But look, look, we actually have color.

It's real mozzarelle.

This definitely is a good quality pizza.

This thing that's not pizza

is the best frozen pizza we've had today.

What? Oh wow.

Uno? Uno.

I tried their pizza in Chicago,

it was different than this.

As opposed to a fresh pizza right outta the oven,

obviously nothing compares.

But for box pizza,

this is definitely one of the better ones.

Unpeeled ground tomatoes.

Yeah, I guess that's the secret, right?

Like just use real tomatoes.

[cardboard ripping] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Daiya Gluten-Free

Dairy-Free pizza. [cheerful music ends]

Let's go. Oh no, oh no.

Why does it look like there's french fries on here?

Look how it breaks down.

They don't let the dough work more on the mixer,

doesn't get elastic.

Think of the gluten like a tic-tac toe board.

As you're mixing, you're adding lines

to like make like a huge net.

If you don't build that net strong enough, it'll collapse.

Taste like vegan cheese.

[Victoria] This might be some sort of

like imitation cheese.

Might not be a hundred percent mozzarelle.

I do like the flavor of the dough.

The crust is crispy.

It feels like that's a whole wheat in it.

Let's see what it is.

I think we all know what I think about this.

[box clanging]

Yes. Gluten, dairy free pizza.

They're using oat cream, oat flour, pea protein

and tapioca starch to make this cheese.

I'm not crazy about the cheese,

but did a really good job at the crust.

Congratulations for them for the crust,

it's very good, I really like it.

I'm happy for you.

[box clanging] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Caulipower Cauliflower Crust

Margarita pizza. [cheerful music ends]

It's a funny presentation of a pizza.

Very thin, no crust.

So we got the little real tomatoes again.

I mean it was a real tomato at like one point

in its life on this earth.

This is a very weird pizza.

The dough, it's very chewy. It's bland flour.

Yeah, no crisp. We got another squish squish.

[Victoria] I'm curious to know

if this is actual pizza dough.

The dough is so fragile that could be a gluten-free dough.

The cheese is kinda bland,

but there's like a garden of herbs in this thing.

I feel garlic, parsley, oregano, sugar.

So many other flavors instead of fresh pizza.

[box clanging] Caulipower!

I'm eating a cauliflower.

For a cauliflower crust,

this is one of the best frozen pizzas of the day.

It's funny, their marketing more like a funny product,

like it's healthier.

[plastic crinkling] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Totino's Cheese pizza.

[cheerful music ends] What is this?

Did you cook this one?

Something's wrong.

[Victoria] I don't like the color of it.

I don't like the way it looks.

There's like a really weird smell coming out of this.

The corn, smell like corn.

[Victoria] It looks like it's very cheap cheese.

Nope. This is the worst

tasting pizza.

Whatever that is, don't ever do it.

It's leaving a very strong aftertaste.

It's almost sour.

Definitely fake cheese.

It looks like little stones on it.

Somebody go over there immediately and shut them down.

Shut down the factory.

[plastic crinkles] Oh yeah!

Totino's. I don't know,

like what, they make the little...

Don't they make like pizza rolls or something?

Wow, there's a million ingredients.

There's a ton of air in this packaging.

If you are gonna use a bag like this,

you at least have to put cardboard in it.

The cardboard will eat the moisture.

In this case, there's no cardboard,

the moisture is just gonna make those ice particles

that are gonna make the cheese not melt.

Totino's, I'm really disappointed in you.

I'm calling your mother tomorrow.

That sauce is like,

it's like barbecue sauce and ketchup put together.

[plastic ripping] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Table 87

Coal Oven Margarita pizza. [cheerful music ends]

This is definitely a margarita pizza.

[Rosario] It looks like a real New York pizza.

I like the color of the mozzarelle.

This is definitely a fresh mozzarelle.

Oh, we got an undercarriage.

Definitely a par baked.

This might have been cooked in like a really hot oven.

Usually over 600 is the most desirable.

We got like maybe a pizza that's not docked

and not made in like 20 minutes.

Very flavorful. It tastes like an actual pizza.

This has more flavor, it's simple.

You have the fresh tomato, the fresh mozzarella.

I thoroughly enjoyed this crust.

It's giving me a lot of flavor,

which means that the fermentation process,

definitely somebody did their research.

It tastes more smokey, the dough.

Table 87? Table 87!

Very good. I wanted to say it,

but I [indistinct]. That's my boy Tommy.

I gotta hand it to Tommy,

'cause he spent I think like 14 years of his life

trying to make this frozen pizza thing a reality.

This is the type of packaging I like.

When you use a vacuum pack,

all the flavor stays inside of the pizza.

It's not allowing any oxygen into the bag.

Even the leaf, you could see the leaf

doesn't have any discoloration.

Very good. This is probably

the best pizza I had all day.

Good job buddy.

[cardboard ripping] [pizza clanging]

[cheerful music] Bessie's Revenge

Screamin' Sicilian

cheese pizza. [cheerful music ends]

Got a little bit of a risen crust.

It looks great. The cheese looks great.

I think the cheese is throwing me off a little bit.

There is the structure

of what would resemble quality cheese,

but the taste itself is not there.

I don't know,

something's going on with this cheese

where it's like you get this like funky tang.

The dough does have a crispy bottom.

I just don't think it's bringing a lot of flavor.

It does have like a tiny speck of tomato flavor.

It's not like a straight up like crime against humanity.

Overall, it's not so bad. It's not my favorite.

[indistinct] Screamin' guy. Ah, there you go.

Screaming Sicilian Pizza Co.

It's like Halloween packaging.

The mustache is awesome.

Wisconsin whole milk fresh mozzarella slices.

Actually the best cheese's for New York style pizza

come from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

I don't know if this brand here is the best for

showing us what Wisconsin cheese is all about.

The cheese wasn't the worst, it just wasn't the best.

[upbeat music] Let's see which products

our chefs like the most and the least.

I think the number one pizza

that I had today was Table 87.

Table 87. I love to taste the fresh ingredients.

The fresh basil, the fresh mozzarella.

Dough that didn't seem like

it was made in a pharmaceutical laboratory.

I think the Trader Joe's one

had a good quality mozzarelle.

Uno's, those tomatoes

were the most wonderful tomatoes we had.

The pizza I disliked the most was

the Totino's party pack.

It definitely tasted fake.

Least favorite today was Totino's

and that vegan, gluten-free soy thing.

Definitely the microwaved was not my favorite pizza.

It was gummy, it was soft. No.

I think frozen pizza can definitely be made

without all the additives and the preservatives.

Quality, less ingredients in the right packaging,

you can have a great product.

Frozen pizza, get your [censored] together.

[upbeat music fades]