I'd never eaten an Annie's product until it was time to research this post, because when I'm in frozen food mode I'm usually more concerned with price than I am with organic toppings or cow antibiotics, and Annie's focus on quality bumps her prices up out of my financial comfort zone. That's not to say I don't respect Annie's approach to the game, just that it happens not to align with my own.

But maybe I'm just being close-minded. You can miss out on a lot if you insist on cramming things into narrow price ghettos; some of my favorite food memories are of $18 hamburgers and $9 pints of beer. There's a lot of value to be found in ordering high-end versions of typically humble restaurant foods, and I suppose it's possible that the same rule could apply in the grocery store. Actually, I know it works in the condiment aisle, where the $4 mustard is leagues better than its half-price shelfmates. Why can't Annie's Rising Crust Organic Supreme Pizza be worth the ... wait? What? $10.99 for frozen pizza?* All right, let's investigate.

*At Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Annie does have the good grace to sell you a pretty bulky pie for your $11: It's 11 inches across and weighs 25.4 ounces. Sure, you can get more than two pounds' worth of DiGiorno Rising Crust Supreme for about half the price, but DiGionro's best for when you're walking home drunk and hungry and the real pizza place is already closed so you have to resort to the 24-hour CVS and you've got just enough self-esteem left to know you deserve better than Red Baron. Annie's is positioned (and priced) as real food for real humans to eat during real meal hours, so I expect more than girth for my near-dozen dollars. But, yes, girth is something, and Annie has it.

The first thing I noticed upon unboxing my pizza is that the pre-risen crust looks too wide. The edge is about 1.5 inches all the way around, which means you get a cross-pie ratio of 3 inches of edge to 8 inches of properly topped pizza. Not ideal. And since I was in the measuring mood, I checked the height--about half an inch before baking and rising--and counted eleven pepperoni slices. Into the oven for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Well, Annie certainly makes good on her rising crust claims. This baby ballooned up to over an inch tall, more than doubling its frozen height. I was afraid that would make it gross and spongy, but it was actually pretty good eating. The light, dimpled, cornmeal-dusted bottom had a slight crunch before giving way to a nicely chewy interior that was better than expected though a bit light on flavor. It reminded me of a street-vendor pretzel.

The toppings were acceptable across the board, but there were no major stars. The uncured pepperoni was meaty, substantial, and mercifully greaseless, but it was underspiced. The mild Italian pork sausage was similarly good but meek; the light fennel and black pepper flavors could have asserted themselves into more of the void left by the unassuming pepperoni. The stray bits of onion and red pepper were predictably bland, though the green pepper chunks showed surprising snap and flavor. The sauce was pasty and seemed overcooked; though it wasn't bad, it was another missed flavor opportunity, though it gets minor credit for not being super sweetened. The mozzarella was organic, which is a nice touch, but it was every bit as wimpy as your typical frozen pizza mozzarella. It's unfair to ask frozen commercial mozzarella to carry a pizza, but none of the other elements of Annie's Rising Crust Organic Supreme asserted themselves, either. This is a pretty good frozen pizza, but for $11, I want better than pretty good.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life, particularly the parts of life that involve bourbon and Totino's Pizza Rolls. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him @WillGordonAgain.

[Photographs: Meredith Smith]

It's unofficial pasta-on-pizza week here on Slice. We kicked it off by temping the feelings towards carb on carb pies, and found that a lot of pizza eaters have a soft spot, or at least an openness to the double carb style. But there are haters. And for those we needed a more compelling argument, so we brought out the heavyweight—Rigatoni Pizza from Mulberry Pizza in LA. (When I say heavyweight, I mean Iron Mike Tyson. And when I say Iron Mike Tyson I mean he is credited with being the creative genius behind this particular pie.) I'm here to dance you to the other end of the spectrum. While pasta on pizza can be great, as you suspected, it can also be oh so bad.

I hear there are great mac n cheese pizzas at Ian's in WI. I have yet to try the Ian's version, or any other for that matter, mostly because they've been out of reach. Then I saw a Tony's frozen version very much in reach during a trip to the freezer aisle.

If I were a mind in the Tony's test kitchen I would be thinking, "what does a pasta on pizza fan expect?" It's not going to be flavor, because let's face it, pasta undressed offers no flavor explosion. And if tomato sauce is not part of the equation, that goes double. The main attraction is the satisfying chew. But if that's too challenging, then go big picture and settle for textural contrast. Ok, that happened. But it wasn't pretty. Let me explain:

See those noodles that appear in white relief? Those ones aren't good. In fact, they suck. They're hard and crunchy and freezer burned. This is the number one plague that faces this pie. To their credit, the 3/4 of the noodles that side-stepped the freezer burn weren't bad. And I imagine even getting 3/4 of the noodles to be chewy and tender after being flash frozen, and spending who knows how long in the freezer aisle, and another leg of who knows how long in a home freezer, is a feat of food science to be commended.

Plague number two: flavor. I did not delude myself about this going in. I knew the pizza would be bland at best. And it was just that, largely completely void of flavor. The crust was so neutral, it was frustrating. In the end, I decided it had the faint taste of the way school cafeteria toast smells—think electric mixed with white bread. The cheese did have a slight tang, but this was a case where the creamy consistency was more attention-grabbing than the flavor. There was something else to the flavor, though it took more than a slice to figure it out. When the light bulb went off, it illuminated the Elmer's paste flavor detector in my brain (which sadly exists). I've been off the glue for some time now, and luckily the Tony's reminder won't be casting me into a relapse.

Save your money and don't be lured in by this pie. There are better pasta on pizza options out there. Try making your own at home with spaghetti, or rigatoni, or hell, SpaghettiOs pizza. And if you are forced to eat this, here's a pro tip: do as i did and reach for some Frank's hot sauce. It's really the only way.

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

[Photos: Adam Kuban]

Hola, homeslices. When I last rapped at ya, I extolled the virtues of Totino's/Jeno's frozen pizzas. Some of you agreed. Some of you were like, "Ew, nasty" (even though I TOLD you not to argue with me). And some comments stuck with me weeks later. Like when Kdroste mentioned the "pepperoni nubbins."

I had never really thought about it, but, yeah, what's up with pepperoni nubbins? The only place you seem to find diced "pizza topping with pepperoni seasoning" (thanks, LizzyBH) is on frozen pizza. What's more, on a pizza like Totino's, all of the toppings are diced.

I had a hunch as to why, so I emailed Totino's, where R&D scientist Nate Morris responded. "Adam's hunch is correct," he said. "We use diced toppings (and carefully design the size of the dices) in order to get toppings into every bite."

I knew it!

But then it hit me: Could this actually be the reason I like to party down with Totino's once every year or so? I thought it was the crust I liked, not the party in every bite.

So, since I wasn't quite over my frozen-pizza craving—and because I didn't want to go over my yearly quota on Totino's—I thought I'd try to re-create this sensation at home.

It's simple enough. If you have even semi-literate knife skills (like yours truly), you can dice up all the ingredients in a jiffy. I didn't go too fine on the dicing—I like some chunkiness, some texture.

• How to cut an onion »
• How to cut a bell pepper »

The most difficult part was the pepperoni. Not the actual work, mind you. Just the psychological leap you have to make as you realize you're dooming your pepperoni to non-crispness. But, for the sake of this column, I put that realization on the back burner. Anyway, who's to say the nubbins might not crisp up in a whole new way?

Not going to hold you in suspense. They didn't. In fact, I think my dicing could have been a bit finer on the pepperoni. The nubbins were a little too meaty, a little too greasy, a little too salty. I felt like I had snapped into a Slim Jim about 50 times too many. (On that note, I was sad to see at a gas station the other day that Edge had replaced Randy "Macho Man" Savage as Slim Jim's spokesman. Is nothing sacred?) Anyway, you really start to see the value of thin-sliced pepperoni when you go and do something like this.

On a more-important level, I'm not sure I enjoyed having ALL THE TOPPINGS in EACH BITE. Yeah, you choose toppings that play well with each other—and I think the classic "supreme" profile of green pepper, onion, and pepperoni do—but there's something about the anticipation and gratification of taking a bite with a little of this, then a little of that, then everything at once. ALL OF THE TOPPINGS ALL OF THE TIME is a little bit too much of a good thing. And it gets kind of boring. Somehow it works—for me, anyway—on a frozen pizza, but on my homemade Frozen Pizza–Style Pizza, it was an overload. (Which I could probably fix by reducing the amount of each topping.)

That said, I do think diced toppings have some potential. Remember Kenji's trip to Monte's in Lynn, Massachusetts?

Anyway, ladies and gents, there you have it: Frozen Pizza–Style Pizza.

Getting a Little Bit Geekier

Some of you out there grouse that Home Slice is sort of gimmicky. To which I say, DUH. That's (mostly) the point. If you want well-researched pizza recipes, you can click over to The Pizza Lab or to Pizzamaking.com. But lately, I figured I'd share some of what's going on with the actual pizza below the toppings. The canvas, if you will.

Like many of you out there, I recently converted to baking pizza on steel. And there's been a learning curve. I'm getting some great crusts, but now that the bottom of the pizza is cooking much faster, I'm finding the top doesn't always get as done as I'd like. Just above is a recent Plain Ol' Lehmann Dough (POLD) pizza I shared in last week's My Pie Monday. The crust was just how I like it on the bottom:

But the top didn't brown as much as I'd wanted. That's grocery-store low-moisture mozzarella on there. Not fresh. I like a little bit of browning to my regular mozzarella, and I just didn't get there before I had to pull the pizza out.

So for the Frozen Pizza–Style Pizza session, I tried something different. Instead of putting my quarter-inch-thick steel on the top rack, I shifted it to the lowest oven rack, as other folks are doing (and as the Baking Steel recipe recommends). But then ... I arranged my half-inch-thick steel above it, along with my old pizza stone—side by side, so that they created an artificial ceiling. I was hoping to approximate the squat, compact space of a commercial deck oven.

Can you guess what happened? Here:

This is the top of the Brussels sprout and bacon pizza I made for my wife. (She loves BS pizza.) Woefully undercooked. Granted, the dough is actually cooked through. There was no raw dough in this pie, no gum line. But the outer crust didn't brown for nothin'. And the Brussels sprouts were near raw. (I had parcooked the bacon, so it was OK.)

This is the bottom of that same pie:

It doesn't look that burned, but trust me, the other half you can't see is scorched. It was bad enough that my wife accused me of turning our apartment into a "hellhole"—hot as the dickens and smokey. (Hey, I brought the Di Fara experience to her!)

What happened was that the artificially low ceiling blocked the hot air from rising to the thermostat at the top of the oven chamber. This meant the heating element didn't cycle off. That's why my crust had KILLER oven spring (it puffed at the edges in about 45 seconds) but why I also had to pull it out around the 2:30 mark.

I'm already thinking of ways to arrange the baking surfaces I have available. If worse comes to worst, I can still get great crusts with the steel at the top of the oven, as I have before:

My "Rosa d'Acciaio," from my maiden bake on steel.

As for my dough used on this one, I went once again with a Lehmann-style New York–ish dough (I used a 3-day cold ferment). But unlike my previous two go-to recipes (Kenji's NYC-style and the Andrew Janjigian/Cook's Illustrated Thin Crust), I backed down the amounts of yeast, sugar, and oil in the dough. From what I understand, those previous two recipes have higher amounts to compensate for home oven realities. With the steel, I wanted to try something a little leaner.

I'll be using my Lehmann formulation from here on out (so that it remains constant) as I adjust the baking surfaces and try some tricks. So that will likely be the foundation of any New York–ish type pizzas you'll see in future Home Slices.

Anyway. Blah blah blah. Hasta la pizza, folks!

About the author: Adam Kuban is the founder of Slice, where he has been blogging about pizza for more than nine years. You should follow him on Twitter: @akuban.

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

My thin and persnickety wife has two major food prohibitions that keep her from eating life to its fullest. The first and less harmful is her aversion to mushrooms. I'm not a fungus lover myself, but I am an accepter, a respecter, and more to the point, a soup-maker. The first thousand times I substituted zucchini and a shot of soy sauce when a recipe called for mushrooms, I felt like a genius. The last thousand times, however, I've felt like a guy who eats too much zucchini.

But even a matter as grave as a kitchen-wide mushroom ban is trivial compared to her other major dietary restriction: I have married a woman who refuses to eat while walking. When I saw "I believe in always eating while stationary and preferably seated" as the sole entry under the "Beliefs" section of her online dating profile, I assumed I'd found a kindred spirit: Here was a woman so committed to eating at all times that she refused to walk and tried not to stand! But it turns out that she eats very rarely—three, four times a day max—and walks all the damn time.

I suspect this is why she'd never eaten a Hot Pocket (or any of its competitors) before we met. She's not averse to junk food, but she'd never been tempted to buy a frozen pocket sandwich because nutritionally dubious portable foods are all marketed as if they're apples or bananas or those fortified rock-climber candy bars. She'd never bothered with a Hot Pocket because she'd never been a healthy, happy, busy, hungry woman on the move, since she schedules all her eating for the couple of minutes a day when she's off the move. So she's never identified with the Hot Pocket eater presented by the advertisers, and since she's also never been a chubby stoner kid subsisting on frozen food, Mountain Dew, and video games, she's also never identified with the Hot Pocket eater presented by reality.

But I was able to break her down last week when I showed her Snoop Dogg's new Hot Pocket tribute video. See, darling, here is a thin, ambitious, successful man who eats them! She's not ready to adopt the full Dogg lifestyle, but she did concede that his endorsement disproves any causal link between Hot Pockets and obesity or laziness.

When I finally got her to the Hot Pocket altar, I was pleased to discover that a couple of challengers have been introduced since my frozen food heyday. She's of a scientific bent, and the only way I can coax her into overindulging is to appeal to her research fetish. How can she properly evaluate her maiden Hot Pocket voyage if she doesn't have any basis for comparison? Totino's Pepperoni Pizza Stuffers and Tony's Pepperoni Pouches would serve as our control group.

We cooked Tony's and Totino's offerings together in a conventional oven along with the over-named Hot Pockets Pizzeria Pepperoni Pizza model, and then tasted all three to determine which would become our house brand of frozen pepperoni sandwich pocket. I had high hopes for Totino's, makers of Slice's favorite pizza roll. Emily had high hopes that I would discover I've outgrown this category. It was a hopeful kitchen that fine morning.

The three brands are similar in terms of price (cheap!), nutrition statistics (ghastly!), and ingredients (most of them!). Two-packs of Hot Pockets and Tony's Pouches run about $2.50; I paid $3.69 for four smaller Totino's Stuffers, which makes them roughly the same price per ounce. Another similarity: They all look gorgeous straight out of the oven. In the photo below, you'll notice that the Hot Pocket looks like a Hot Pocket, Tony's Pouch looks like a burrito, and the Totino's Stuffer looks like an empanada.

From left: Hot Pocket, Tony's Pouch, Totino's Stuffer

When you hack them open, however, you realize that beauty only runs crust deep for Tony and Totino. I rearranged them for the interior photos by putting the Hot Pocket in the middle, the better to demonstrate its clear aesthetic superiority. Whereas the Pocket is plump and domed and shows good separation between crust and filling, the others are squashed, thin, and dense, with ominous bands of gray dough where the crust meets the stuffing.

From left: Tony's Pouch, Hot Pocket, Totino's Stuffer

The Hot Pocket was also the clear winner when chewing time finally came around. It had thick half-moons of gamy-but-good pepperoni surrounded by the proper dosage of melted mozzarella. The cheese didn't taste like much other than salt, but it held things together and provided a welcome textural contrast to the crispy crust, which was where the Pocket really distinguished itself from the Pouch and the Stuffer. Whereas the latter two were marred by thick, ponderous exoskeletons that turned gummy by the time they gave way to the filling, the Hot Pocket crust was light and crisp.

Tony's bland, slightly sour crust seemed to be aspiring toward flaky but ended up pasty. Totino fared a little better but still couldn't come close to matching the Hot Pocket. Both barns did fine in the filling department—in fact, Totino's spicy chunks of pepperoni were the best of the bunch—but not well enough to counter Hot Pockets' overwhelming crust advantage.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life and hates mayonnaise. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him on twitter @WillGordonAgain.

[Photographs: Meredith Smith]

The last From the Freezer post dealt with the California Pizza Kitchen Margherita. The BBQ Chicken variety got a vote or two in the comments section, so with the Margherita still fresh in my mind, I decided to see how the CPK "best recipe yet"claim fared under close Slice inspection.

Just to be up front about everything, my biases were not stacked in favor of the "bbq chicken recipe". For one, I'm in the chicken-doesn't-belong-on-pizza camp. Also, I don't think barbecue sauce has any business gettin' all cozy between the cheese and crust. And speaking of cheese, this frozen pie has my least favorite one: smoked gouda. (To me, the smoke usually tastes overwrought and the dairy leans metallic.) The remaining components of the pie are red onions and cilantro, neither of which I take issue with in general. However, since making crazy California pizza combos is the Pizza Kitchen's thing, and they proved they could actually make an edible product with the Margherita, I endeavored to approach this variety with an open mind and a really empty belly.

Despite all the strikes against this pizza, it wasn't actually as bad as I feared. The barbecue sauce—that sticky sweet version that fills the dunking cup served alongside a box of chicken nuggets—was the dominating flavor. And despite my misgivings, the cubes of "grilled" white meat chicken weren't dried out or bland (thanks to an enhanced solution, as evidenced by the ingredient list). The familiarity of fast food barbecue sauce paired with pumped up chicken meat turned what I anticipated to be a loathsome pie, into something more akin to a McDonald's-esque guilty pleasure frozen pizza experience.

Now that's not to say that this is the best frozen pizza ever. The "crispy thin crust" is like a stack of compressed flour tortillas until you reach the satisfying crunch of the pizza's lip. Though flawed as crust, it's not an offender in terms of taste, serving instead as a palette for combining more flavorful things than itself upon. But beyond the crust, over which I had no control, I saw room for improvement.

Take the cilantro, for starters. The tiny little specks of the dried herb didn't have a prayer of imparting any real cilantro flavor. But it was easy enough to chop up some fresh cilantro and sprinkle it on top.

A marked improvement. Lucky for me the smoked gouda on this pizza didn't have that smoked cheese flavor I had dreaded. It was actually indistinguishable from mozzarella. But a little smokiness, just not the kind that's in gouda, didn't sound like a terrible idea. I realized that with some help from the spice cabinet, I could add smokiness and a little heat as well. Enter the aleppo and smoked paprika:

This is when things really started looking up. For those not reading My Pie Monday every week (um, why not?!), Aleppo pepper is a thing (introduced to Slice by dhorst) and it's getting more and more converts every week. Get into it! The smoked paprika added a smokiness that isn't fake-y or off-putting, and added the flavor dimension this pizza was missing.

Because I like it spicy (and because I have more serrano peppers in the pizza garden than I know what to do with), I tossed some sliced chilis on as well. Now, I'm not claiming to have made a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but the dressed up version of the CPK BBQ Chicken was a huge improvement.

Here's a before and after slice shot:

To be honest, this had somewhat of a surprise ending. I started off not even liking the idea of this frozen pizza. But in the end, through enhancing the intended elements, I wound up making a better version and thereby convincing myself that it wasn't such a terrible pizza after all. So, maybe if this Slice thing doesn't work out I could land a job at the California Pizza Kitchen food labs?!

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

[Photograph: Meredith Smith]

Slice has had a fair amount of frozen pizza coverage over the years, and yet to date California Pizza Kitchen has escaped close scrutiny. From what I can tell, fans of CPK frozen pies are really into the Thai Chicken and BBQ Chicken varieties. Which might explain why those were missing from the freezer section. But the Margherita, in my mind, is a tell-all. So what did CPK's tell?

First off, their's isn't a traditional Margherita. They use the loosy goosey interpretation of a pizza with cheese, tomatoes, and basil. The tomatoes are diced, rather than sauced, a four cheese blend replaces straight up mozz, and the basil is obviously the kind you shake out of a bottle.

The asiago, Roman, Parmesan, mozzarella blend is the standout here. It's actually not bad. There is way more flavor complexity than you would expect from a frozen pizza, considering most have cheese that has more in common with wet cardboard than dairy. It's salty, a little nutty even, though the texture is more squeaky/chewy than is becoming of melted cheese.

Diced tomatoes do not freeze beautifully. They hold their shape well enough, but a thawed out frozen tomato is as mushy and watery as you imagine it would be. But the "crispy thin crust" can handle it. From the middle to about an inch ahead of the edge, the crust is bready and cottony. But towards the outer edge things get interesting. The super crunchy rim is almost Cheez-It in nature—both in terms of flavor and texture. And sure that doesn't make for a desirable pizza crust, but it makes for a pretty decent snack. And really, that's the attitude you need when you unsheathe these pies and pop them in the oven. It's not good pizza, but it's not terrible.

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

"I simply don't have the freezer space to stockpile iced pizza and wait for unambition to strike. But am I missing out?"

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

Do we really need artisanal frozen pizza? I'm Slice's dunderheaded populist correspondent, and even I don't know who sustains this market. I guess some people feed it to their young, and the TV keeps trying to convince me that sports-watching young men unfreeze gourmet pies whilst drinking beer and totally not being like chicks, bro. This seems unlikely, but I suppose they must be telling some version of the truth because the grocery store is crammed full of the stuff.

I'm not opposed to the concept of frozen pizza, but actually buying it requires a rare strain of premeditated laziness: It's hard for me to commit to eating pizza at some unspecified future time when the delivery place is closed and I lack the gumption to customize a ball of store-bought dough and a can of crushed tomatoes. I simply don't have the freezer space to stockpile iced pizza and wait for unambition to strike. But am I missing out? Some of the boxes make it look awfully good.

I started poking around the frozen food aisle last week and yikes, some of those good-looking boxes are quite pricey. I can see buying a 99-cent single-serve disk of Mama Whoever's plain cheese and tricking it out with whatever leftovers are on hand—for best results, employ this tactic immediately following a ham holiday as opposed to a candy holiday—but some of the higher-end selections cost nearly as much as delivery.

Frozen pizza's appeal is in its convenience, but what's more convenient than paying a stranger to bring you hot dinner? Any frozen pie retailing for north of $5 really needs to be legitimately good eating. I've had recent and pleasant experience with the in-house version of Uno's Artisan Thin Crust pizzas, so I figured I'd start my exploration of the deluxe frozen pizza market with the icebox rendition.

I tried the Artisan Crust Margherita and BBQ Chicken; I bought them at different stores for $8.49 and $5.99 respectively. They were the most expensive frozen pizza at each place, despite being on the slim side at 14.5 ounces apiece. That's a lot of scratch for frozen food, so even before I set about to preheating I knew that I couldn't recommend Uno's Artisan Crust unless it significantly advanced the frozen pizza game. At these prices, a brand-name version of Mama Whoever's isn't going to cut it.

I started with the Margherita. It's a bold gambit to sell an expensive frozen pizza topped by nothing more than diced tomatoes and mozzarella (and cursory basil, garlic, and olive oil). When it comes to frozen pizza, it might be best to invert the standard Slice doctrine about avoiding topping overload: If you know you're not getting fresh, premium ingredients, then maybe you're better off going with some quantity. Frozen tomatoes and mozzarella just aren't up to the task of justifying the price of this bland, sauceless pizza.

The wafer-thin crust crisps up fine in the prescribed 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees, but that's about the only thing this pizza had going for it. The tomatoes held their texture well, but they had very little flavor and were haphazardly scattered, with most of them landing in the middle. For $8.49, I don't want to have to rearrange my frozen pizza toppings. The cheese tasted a little bit like salt, which made it taste like seaside air rather than regular air. This was no better than any other plain frozen pizza; I wasn't expecting much and I was still disappointed.

The BBQ Chicken offered a shot at redemption due to the aforementioned topping issue. If it retained the Marg's decent crust and piled on some credible sauce, chicken, and onion, then it could be a good time. It was not a good time.

The crust didn't fare as well this go-round; it was so limp and soggy that I tore a hole in it getting it out of the oven, despite pushing a bit over the top of the 10-12 minute cook time. The pizzas weighed the same, so I can't blame the increased bulk of the toppings (there was a good bit of chicken, but hardly any onion and not much cheese). Maybe the sauce gummed things up?

The chicken was no good. It tasted tinny and sour and inferior to even the worst of the frozen poultry I've known and tolerated. The sauce was light in both volume and flavor, and it wasn't so bad, with a touch of tang that helped smarten up the bland crust, but it wasn't tough enough to cover for the chicken. The cheese didn't do anything other than melt nicely.

I advise you to stay away from Uno's Artisan Crust frozen pizzas. The restaurant versions are good, but the art gets lost in the freezing.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life and hates mayonnaise. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him on twitter @WillGordonAgain.

[Photograph: Maggie Hoffman]

Call it the curse of the frozen vegetables. This pizza from Trader Joe's (does anyone else feel stupid saying Trader Giotto's? I just can't bring myself to do it...) is topped with mushrooms, tomatoes, red peppers, artichokes, asparagus, and black olives. And you can't taste a darn thing. The freezing process is cruel to veggies, and there may not be any way around it. (It's particularly sad in the case of the asparagus on this pie, which is stringy, mushy, and bland.) No matter how colorful and vitamin-packed they look, the frozen vegetables on this pizza blur together, adding a vague sweetness but nothing else. The only topping with any character is the salty black olives, but they're nothing fancy.

The sauce on this pie is tasty but very lightly applied, and the cheese has a good texture but could use a bit more richness and salt. The crust is well-flavored but dense and floury.

Sorry, vegetarians, this one isn't the answer to your pizza-topping dreams.

More From the Freezer Case

Home Run Inn »
The Original Naan Pizza Spinach and Paneer Cheese »
American Flatbread Revolution »
Kashi Thin Crust Mushroom Trio and Spinach »
Trader Joe's Pizza Parlanno »
Amy's Cheese and Pesto Pizza with Whole Wheat Crust »

[Photographs: Maggie Hoffman]

Serious Eats editor and photographer extraordinaire Robyn Lee picked up this frozen pizza at Apna Bazaar Cash & Carry in Jackson Heights.

The pizza is topped with gooey, creamy mozzarella (the package says it's buffalo-milk, though we couldn't necessarily tell) and thin slices of paneer. The cheese is made with vegetarian-friendly microbial rennet. If anything, we would have appreciated a bit more paneer in the topping, but the delicate slices add a little flavor without any of the lovable rubberiness of paneer cubes.

The light layer of sauce isn't too sweet, and there's a little hint of Indian spices. I wouldn't say this pizza will curb your saag paneer cravings, but it does have just a bit of Indian flair. The garlicky spinach topping may not appeal to everyone; if you like your spinach fresh and lightly cooked, these leaves aren't for you, but most of our tasters didn't mind the flavor.

The crust is what makes this pizza worth seeking out. It's quite likely the tastiest frozen pizza crust we've tried. It's a bit thicker than any naan I've seen, with a crisp skin and totally tender interior—this crust has life to it! It had none of the off flavors or density we've come to expect from frozen pizza. We're looking forward to trying another Original Naan Pizza. Have you seen them in any stores near you?

More from the Freezer Case...

Dr. Oetker Ristorante Mozzarella Frozen Pizza »
Trader Joe's Pizza Parlanno »
Red Fork Thin & Crispy Margherita »
American Flatbread Revolution »
Kashi Thin Crust Mushroom Trio and Spinach »
Amy's Cheese and Pesto Pizza with Whole Wheat Crust »
Red Baron By the Slice Frozen Pizza »
Trader Joe's Pizza Margherita »

[Photograph: iboy_daniel on Flickr]

Hey! What a week for frozen pizza! First it gets a star turn as the subject of this week's Slice pizza poll, and today, the folks at Consumer Reports released their list of best iced slices. After the jump, the press release from CR that just landed in the Slice inbox.

Can frozen pizza truly satisfy? After buying and baking more than 100 cheese pies, Consumer Reports found that, yes frozen pizza can satisfy with Amy's Cornmeal Crust 3 Cheese, Home Run Inn Classic, and DiGiorno Rising Crust Four Cheese, a CR Best Buy, leading the ratings. The full report on frozen pizzas appears in the January issue of Consumer Reports and online at consumerreports.org.

The best frozen pizzas, a trio of very different but very good pies, included the artisanal Amy's Cornmeal Crust 3 Cheese, the priciest pie tested at $7.99. Amy's won points for its combination of fresh tasting vegetables, herbs, and dollops of goat cheese over a flavorful cornmeal crust. The Chicago-style Home Run Inn Classic Cheese, $7.42, features a generous blanket of tasty cheese and abundant sauce over a pastry-style crust. The Italian-style DiGiorno Rising Crust Four Cheese, $6.47, has lots of cheese and sauce over a thick, chewy crust.

But Consumer Reports found that there's room for improvement, since no pies were excellent. Shoppers shouldn't buy by brand, the CR Best Buy DiGiorno pie scored higher than the other DiGiorno pies tested. The same was true of the Red Baron pizzas tested.

"Frozen pizzas are convenient and more cost effective than a pizzeria and according to our tests, they can also offer quality," said a Consumer Reports expert. "Shoppers should take into account more than just price when purchasing, ingredients and nutritional components factor into the overall experience."

In Consumer Reports frozen pizza taste test, cheese pies were the focus. They are one of the most popular types, according to the National Frozen Pizza Institute, a trade organization. Seven trained Consumer Reports sensory panelists tasted each brand three times in an order designed to eliminate bias. They didn't know which pizza they tasted, and all samples were coded with three-digit numbers. Testers graded crust, cheese, and sauce separately then also gave an overall impression of each pie.

The frozen pizzas were also rated based on nutrition. All brands scored adequately, but Consumer Reports discovered quite a range in calories (260 to 380), fat (9 to 18 grams), saturated fat (3.5 to 9 grams), and sodium (570 to 870 milligrams) per serving. Top-rated Amy's stood out as the lowest in saturated fat and among the lowest in sodium, while Red Baron Fire Baked scored Fair because it was among the highest in calories, total fat, and saturated fat. Consumer Reports ratings are based on manufacturer's suggested serving size.

If you're a subscriber, you can see the full report with the ratings here on Consumer Reports.

Macabee Mini Pizza Bagels [Photographs: Robyn Lee]

In theory, we love bagel bites. They're so cute! They're like tiny pizzas! You can eat them anytime!

But in reality, mini pizza bagels have flaws. Sometimes the bagel part is soggy, and sometimes it's stale-tasting (but crackly crisp.) The sauce can be tinny and tomato-pasty, or nearly absent altogether. We'd love for the cheese to be gooey and salty and rich, but it's often not plentiful (or flavorful) enough.

Could we find a bagel bite to love? We tried three different brands to find out.

Macabee Mini Pizza Bagels

These bagel bites (bought at our local Whole Foods) were by far the most disappointing of the bunch. The bagel part was crisp on the outside after a 15-minute toast (though less successful on the inside.) The sauce and cheese mingled into one indistinguishable mass of topping, and the cheese was a little grainy. The sauce was a little overly salted and tinny, but the saddest part was the sogginess of the top part of the bagel. No one wants to eat pizza-flavored sponge.

Ore-Ida Bagel Bites

Things were looking up when we warmed up the Ore-Ida version. There was much more differentiation between sauce and cheese, though some tasters found the sauce a little ketchupy. Though the cheese (a blend of mozzarella, cheddar, and Monterey Jack) was a bit bland and not quite gooey enough, it was probably the best cheese of the examples we tried. The bagel was slightly ridged, which contributed to its crisp exterior, but some found the bagel a little sour and stale-tasting. Still, a few folks chose this as their top bagel bite.

Shop-Rite Mini Pepperoni Pizza Bagels

Ok, comparing cheese-topped bagel bites to pepperoni-and-cheese-topped bagel bites is like comparing apples to, well, pepperoni-covered-apples, so this isn't quite fair. But we tasted Shop-Rite's store brand mini pizza bagels anyway. And we were pretty pleasantly surprised. The cheese resisted melting, so we let these guys cook a little bit longer than the others. (It still didn't get that melty.) The bagel flavor was the best out of the three—no sour stale taste. But the sauce was a little sweet and too heavily spiced with dried oregano. The pepperoni nubbins looked a little more like bacon bits, but they added a nice hint of smokiness and heat wherever they were present. Of the three options we tried, these were my personal favorite of the bunch, in a guilty-pleasure kind of way.

I'm not sure we're ever going to find a wonderful frozen bagel bite out of a box. Do you ever eat these things? Got a favorite brand?

Perhaps we'll have send Kenji back into The Pizza Lab to work up a homemade version...

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

I wouldn't blame ol' Trader Giotto for the odd distribution of toppings on this pie; these things have a way of sliding around, so we ended up with more or less a pepperoni half and a sausage half.

The sausage (which was in pretty large crumbles) was salty and quite moist. I usually prefer sausage, but the pepperoni was actually the star of this pie: it was well-flavored and a little spicy, with nice crispy edges from the oven. This pie confirmed what I suspected back when we tried Trader Joe's Margherita: with frozen pizza, simple is not always better. A few toppings can be a welcome distraction from frozen pizza's inherent weaknesses.

And now, the bad news: the crust is pretty bland on this pie (though not off-tasting) with no particular merits. It's crunchy on the end crust, soggy in the middle. The sauce was a bit too bold, salty and overly sweet and way too heavy on the dried herbs. It could be that the mushy roasted vegetables contributed to the sweetness; they didn't really add any other flavor of their own.

Would I eat this pie again? Maybe. But I'll definitely be seeking out more heavily-topped frozen pizzas from now on.

More from the Freezer Case...

Dr. Oetker Ristorante Mozzarella Frozen Pizza »
Red Fork Thin & Crispy Margherita »
American Flatbread Revolution »
Kashi Thin Crust Mushroom Trio and Spinach »
Amy's Cheese and Pesto Pizza with Whole Wheat Crust »
Red Baron By the Slice Frozen Pizza »
Trader Joe's Pizza Margherita »

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

Kashi is taking on too many challenges with their Thin Crust Mushroom Trio and Spinach frozen pizza. It's hard enough to make a tasty frozen pizza crust, let alone a healthy, tasty frozen pizza crust.

This pizza's "stone-fired thin crust" is made with seven whole grains, sesame, and flax seed. It's a bit like a fibrous cracker that you have to chew for a while before swallowing. It could use a little more seasoning, but if you're used to eating high-fiber cereal, you may be able to get past the flavor of the crust and texture to enjoy the toppings on this pie.

The sauce and cheese aren't bad, and they extend all the way to the edge of the pizza, which is a good idea, given the crust issues. The mushrooms topping the pie are earthy and flavorful. I wish they'd left the spinach off, though—it's a bit murky-tasting, without any fresh green flavor.

Have you tried Kashi's frozen pizzas? Are their original-crust pies a better choice?

More from the Freezer Case...

Red Fork Thin & Crispy Margherita »
Amy's Cheese and Pesto Pizza with Whole Wheat Crust »
American Flatbread Revolution »
Trader Joe's Pizza Margherita »

[Photographs: Maggie Hoffman]

I picked up this Red Fork pizza from the Whole Foods freezer case and, upon opening the package, felt quite optimistic. The mozzarella looked, well, real. Fresh, even. With all the claims of all-natural ingredients on the box, I thought we might have found a winner.

After a trip to the Serious Eats–Slice HQ toaster oven, the flat crust got pretty crisp. There wasn't much rise or tenderness, but the crust's flavor was fine.

What ruined this pie for me was the salt. The sauce tasted only of salt, with a little oregano and garlic, but the saltiness overpowered any tomato flavor that was present. Though we could see little chunks of tomatoes scattered across the pie, we could barely taste them.

The mozzarella was a redeeming factor: it was sweet and had a good creamy texture, but the balance of this pie was way, way off. I can only imagine what would happen if you piled on salty toppings.

Should we give Red Fork's other pizzas a try?

[Photographs: Maggie Hoffman]

With frozen pizza, do you get what you pay for?

I was a little shocked at the price of the American Flatbread pizza I purchased this week, a 12-inch number topped with tomato sauce, caramelized onions, mushrooms, cheese, and herbs. The damage: $11.99. More than I've ever paid for a frozen pizza, though not as much as we shelled out for Domino's new 6-Cheese Wisconsin pie, which is 13.99 for a 12" medium and $15.99 for 14" in Manhattan.

But the American Flatbread Revolution pie just may be worth the steep price. The cheese is rich and fresh-tasting, properly gooey and not greasy. The mushrooms contribute a remarkably concentrated earthy flavor, especially given how thinly they're sliced. I wish there were more of them, but I'm a big mushroom fan.

If you're a fan of French onion soup, this pizza's for you. The caramelized onions are quite sweet, and add umami to this vegetarian pie. Luckily, the sauce isn't sweet (and is distributed quite sparingly on the pie.) The herbs add a bit of fresh savory flavor, too.

The only weak point is the crust. I followed the package directions, cooking for eight and a half minutes, since the package warned that overbaking could lead to dryness. While the end crust got a just-crispy exterior and had nice moist texture inside, I think the pie could have used a little more heat to avoid floppiness at the tip of the slice. There's not much of a rise, but after all, they do call it "flatbread" for a reason. That said, the flavor was nice and yeasty, without the health-bread taste of the Amy's pie we tried last week.

This pie may have cost twice (or more) what other frozen pizzas cost, but I think it's worth shelling out the big bucks if flavor is your priority.

More From the Freezer Case

Taste Test: 5 Frozen Pepperoni Pizzas
Dr. Oetker Ristorante Mozzarella Frozen Pizza
Red Baron By the Slice Frozen Pizza
Trader Joe's Pizza Margherita
Amy's Cheese and Pesto Pizza with Whole Wheat Crust