I also decided to set some parameters for the experiment:
1) All the pizza's would have similar toppings, even if that led to a crust thickness variance (read on).
2) Each pizza would have three photos; Box Front (as above), as it appears out of the package, and as it appears after cooking.
3) Each pizza would be cut into 8 slices; 4 to be consumed immediately, 4 to cool and be refrigerated for the next day (usually for lunch, but on Tuesdays that doesn't work for my schedule, so I'll just figure something else out).
4) Of the first four slices eaten immediately, three would be with sauce (three different kinds) one plain. Call it an experiment within an experiment; determine which sauce compliments each pizza the best.
5) The blog posts are posted a day later - this isn't live streaming of a pizza eating contest.
6) Blog posts will contain the cooking instructions and price paid for the pizza. What's an experiment without some cold hard facts?
Enough Chatter, time for a couple more photos!
What were you expecting? It's a frozen pizza. Any editorial here? Typical amount of pepperoni, all the pizza's are some sort of Pepperoni & Sausage combo. I didn't want to over complicate things, figuring any frozen pizza brand should be able to nail this one.
On to the finished goods!
Now that's a pizza! I think a few Italians just had a stroke. Apologies. Honestly though, given the amount of frozen pizza available in grocery stores on this side of the pond that is what the majority of the pizzas in America look like. Your mileage may vary.
The stats!
Price: $8.99 (the range was $5 to $9.99)
Calories: 340 for 1/4 of a pizza (a serving = 2 slices when cut into 8 wedges as most would tend to do)
Cooking Temp: 425 F. It didn't occur to me until just now but I bet ovens in the UK (umm, probably the rest of the PLANET) use Celsius, don't they? That converts to 218.33 C.
Cooking Time: The instructions are 10 to 15 minutes. I went with 12 minutes. Judgement call.
So how was it? Fine, as the lead off candidate I don't have any reference points other than comparing it to the go-to pizza I'm replacing, and in that regard it isn't a tremendously fair comparison. The pizza it is trying to replace has a thicker crust. For a thin body, this was a good pizza.
A few words on Crust Thickness. So why even inject a thin pizza into the competition? I wanted to pick five and there was another candidate closer in the crust department but it was only available as either a plain cheese pizza or a Canadian Bacon with Pineapple combo. I figured those toppings being so radically different than all the other pizzas would throw things off more than a crust thickness variance. Besides, the "right" crust thickness may have made it into someone's doctoral thesis, with dubious conclusions, so lets skip over that debate, shall we?
Final Thoughts: It went good with each of the sauces. On the high end of the price scale, I didn't even realize that until I looked up the photo of the receipt I had saved with the pizza pics and my reaction was surprise- I didn't realize that this one was a pricey pie, relatively speaking (insanely cheap when you consider it could be the core of a meal for two).
More on the sauces in a later entry.
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