Seen those vacuum-packed pizzas that seem to have become all the rage of supermarket stockists in the past year or so?
There seems to be several suppliers providing them to all our regular supermarket haunts.
They certainly look nice with their sort-of fresh ingredients on display – they look much better, in fact, than your normal supermarket pizzas from the freezer, which we’d never consider buying.
We’ve tried a number of them by now.
Some have been OK.
Just.
Some – most – have been awful.
Even when the toppings have passed muster, the problem has been getting the pies crispy – despite following the cooking instructions scrupulously.
Crispy?
Nah.
More like flaccid, limp, soggy.
This is our first road test of a N-Joy Gourmet Foods pizza.
As well as the advertised cheese and meat there’s olives and artichoke bits. Well actually, they’re more like artichoke shavings.
Get the oven real hot and into it goes our pizza.
After fives minutes or so the verdict is … hmmmm, certainly smells the business.
When it’s just about done, a big bubble has, um, bubbled up in the centre of the pie.
Out of the oven it comes to be sliced.
The spicy salami rather heavily dominates.
The goats cheese tastes good but it’s a bit overwhelmed and there’s only so much of it.
The olives and artichoke shavings are relegated to decoration status.
Happily, though, it has form and structure – it’s something approaching crispiness and a slice can be held in one hand rather than two.
This is the best of its ilk we’ve tried … so far.
Meanwhile, it’s fair to say that those pizza purists who start from scratch AND those more pragmatic folk who use store-bought bases or even pita bread really do have a point.
consider the sauce 
Have you tried the Sims ones? I haven’t yet. I know you’re not an Aldi convert, but I love their ‘woodfired’ frozen pizzas. They’re all vegetarian (and, horrifyingly, shipped frozen from Italy). I’m not sure if you would like them – they do taste like frozen pizza – but they are a great standby in our house.
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Yeah, have tried the brand that Sims stock – not good for us. Something like this nice for a quick, relatively cheap meal. But when it comes to pizzas, we’re Lebanese boys at heart!
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I will share my super duper secret with you. Buy zaatar pizzas and use as pizza bases! A taste sensation!
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Now there’s an idea. Thanks for sharing! So obvious! So CHEAP! Actually, I don’t why I haven’t thought of bulk buying them and freezing them, then just filling ’em up with crunchy veg like we do at The Circle anyway. And Gerry’s Pites, near Quant Viet, have become a regular for us now, too.
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Eating pizza from a packet is like eating a banana from a plastic sealed packet. It’s ludicrous.
Who actually pays the same, or more, money for a 3/10 ‘pizza’ that was made 4 weeks before getting to the supermarket, when you can buy one cooked on the spot from the shop across the road?
The world has gone crazy!
There are ridiculously cheap, hot, fresh pizza options at Yarraville, Seddon and Footscray, all within immediate walking distance from the supermarket.
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Hard to disagree – but to tell you the truth, I find the pizza options you list as not being much or any better than what we had last night. I like the fancy thin-crust nouveau ones but they’re out of our league price-wise. And one of the Yarraville options, well known, served me up just about the worst pizza I’ve ever had about a year ago. The one we had last night had olives, goats cheese, olives and marinated artichoke bits – all preserved, not fresh.
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Just so u know these pizzas are not made 4 weeks before, they are made and distributed within 2days, the turn over is usually every week, they have a shelf life of aprox 2 and a half weeks being that the vacuum sealed bags keeps their longevity, no preservatives are added and most ingredients like the pumpkin eggplant mushrooms etc are fresh…
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