Frozen Pizza Review - Palermo's Rustico

I had a craving for pizza last night after watching a show about the history of pizza. Part of that history included the evolution of the frozen pizza. I've always considered the Tombstone a guilty pleasure (and great hot sauce vehicle), but do prefer the more modern varieties by DiGiorno and Freschetta. Over the last few years I've begun to prefer thinner crisper crusts, but don't object to a little extra dough either.

As anybody who's spent some time in the frozen food aisle knows, the choices in frozen pizza can be overwhelming. Everything from store brand, Tony's, Red Barron, Jack's, and Tombstone, to Reggio's and California Pizza Kitchen just to name a few. I wanted to go top shelf, but wasn't impressed by the 2 for $11 deal on the DiGiornos and Freschettas. Just next to them were the Palermo's varieties. I hadn't tried them before, mostly because of the cost, but yesterday they were 2 for $10. I could save $.50 and try something new. I got the supreme because I could see green olives on the box. Think about that for a minute. When was the last time you saw a frozen pizza with green olives? I don't think I ever have.

Aside from green olives, this bad boy had sausage, pepperoni, roasted onion, roasted green and red peppers, and black olives. I took the liberty of crushing some pequin peppers over the pizza before putting it in the oven.


One thing that gave me hope when I pulled it out of the box was the vacuum sealed wrap that was around it. I don't know why but it seems the better pizzas come in the vacuum seal rather than the regular old plastic wrap. Not to mention, I could see that the onions and peppers actually had been "roasted" before packaging.



I preheated the oven to 425 as directed, and actually waited for the heat to be reached. It looked like they took some care in packaging, so the least I could do was follow the instructions.

After about 15 minutes I pulled it out of the oven. It had a really nice dark golden top and the bottom was crisp. The only criticism I had at this point was that a lot of the crust around the perimeter still looked a little too white. This could have had something to do with oven placement.

Now for the taste. It was really, really good for a frozen pizza. The crust was both crisp and chewy. The toppings were very generous and tasty. This is probably my new favorite, especially among the rising crust varieties. It is the closest that I've had to a restaurant pizza out of the freezer. I can heartily recommend this frozen pizza.