Pizza Project - Day 3

When I started this project I neglected to consider (at least) one thing.  There isn't a whole lot to say about frozen pizza.

Today is Day 3, rhymes with Day D, which is convenient because today's pizza is a DiGiorno.

 I hesitated to include a D box in the experiment, I've had them before so it isn't a "new" pizza.  But I was swayed by the box with it's rippled awning look, jaunty "pizzeria!" stenciled across the top clearly implying (to me anyway) this was different from other DiGiorno pizzas.  The final clincher was the picture of the pizza- this looks like a crust thickness comparable to the pizza I'm replacing.

But how would it perform?  Lets get to cold hard facts.

See what I did there?  Frozen pizza, cold hard facts. Ha!  A bit of a surprise here- what I initially thought was sausage is is actually genoa salami cut into strips.  Seeing the pizza now, you can clearly see this shown on the cover photo.  Maybe it is just one of those things where it's obvious after its been pointed out.  Regardless, this is the first time I've seen salami on a pizza cut this way.  Note also the pepperoni count is down to 12 from the 16 found on both the Connie's and the Bellatoria.

The stats might help explain the pepperoni reduction.
Price: $5 (the range was $5 to $9.99)
Calories: 380 for 1/4 of a pizza (two sizes of a pizza cut 8 ways).
Cooking Temp: 375 F. That converts to about 190.5 C.
Cooking Time: The instructions call for 20 to 21 minutes.  I went with 20, a bit of a silly range.

As I took it out of the oven the pizza's appearance isn't the first thing I noticed.

The first the I noticed was the smell.  This pizza has a strong aroma, unexpectedly strong.  That might be the salami at work. The crust has also transformed into a typical DiGiorno rising crust, thick and best described as poofy.  Not what I expected from the picture, but if I had actually read the box I wouldn't have been surprised- it says "crispy outside, soft & airy inside..".

But if I had looked at the text on the box closely I may not have chosen this pizza on the basis they have trade marked the phrase "the crust!" and "the sauce!"  Seriously?  I wouldn't have expected a company could trade mark such generic phrases.  The've also trademarked the word-phrase "pizzeria!" and "pizzeria style crust - created with care".

So how was it?  A bit overwhelming.  I enjoyed the leftovers more than the fresh baked pizza.  Maybe it was just an off evening.  It was filling, and at $5 it's a volume/price leader.

Tomorrow we're off to the letter F.