Freschetta PizzAmoré 10-topping Supreme

Dan lets 'em have it

Contained in this pizza box were the following: one (1) pizza; one (1) exclusive Fresch-Bake tray; two (2) orange safety cones; one (1) mini fire-extinguisher; two (2) fire-retardant safety gloves; one (1) welding mask; and one (1) magnifying glass.  Confused and incredulous?  Allow me to explain.

Josh and I have tried many pizzas, but never one with warnings as frightful as the ones found on this box, highlighted in yellow at the bottom of the box:

-Pizza must be baked in the oven- ready tray provided (this is the aforementioned “Fresch-Bake” tray)

-the tray and pizza must be “no closer than 5” from oven’s bottom heat source”

-Pizza must be based in a regular oven.  Failure to follow all instructions may cause smoke, and in rare cases, fire.

We’ve seen some pretty dumbed-down pizza instructions with graphics a 6 month old could follow, but never any warnings of smoke and fire.  And don’t you think it’s a little brazen of them to insist we use the “Fresch-Bake” tray?  The tray was a paper plate that didn’t feel any different than a normal old plate, but it was likely coated with something to survive the high heat.  Through its magic, the crust turned out fine.  But to insist on using something?  For sure, we will be baking another without their bloody tray to see what will happen.

Second, in their 10-topping supreme, they include oregano as a topping.  Say what?  And garlic?  I spied no garlic on this pizza.  In my opinion, which I hope you’ve come to trust, it’s a little bold to list the three kinds of peppers as separate toppings.  They also listed the two cheeses on here as toppings.  The mozzarella doesn’t count because that’s expected.  And the copious amounts of parmesan I expected was about the same amount of dandruff I’d expect from a bald man who regularly uses Head & Shoulders.  No, no, no.  This is more like a four-topping pizza.

An above-average crust, below average toppings for a supreme, some weird science, and somewhat false advertising (compare the box with the product). “It’s not Freschetta, it’s We’ve Got No Clue How to Put Toppings on a Pizza”.

(4.3 pizzas out of 10)

Joshua lets it be

Well.   Here we go with another marketing lesson kiddos.  First off, create a sub par product.  For example, let’s say a Freschetta Pizza.  Just a regular old freschetta pizza.  Litter it all over the market place, put it on sale, who cares, just get it out there.

Then, produce a newer, bigger, badder pizza and give is a crazy name (like Ultimate Supreme) or this case, PizzAmore’ !  (you see that, they took the words pizza and amore and combined them!…. at least I hope that’s what they did, cause otherwise they took an awful misspelling of the word piss (does two z’s make it exreme?) and they’re talking about pee pee love…..

Good lord… now all I can think about is pizzing…

Class dismissed, but remember, you can put a tux on an angry bear, but it’s still an angry bear (or your mother in law…)

4 out of 10 all night last minute study binges

 (I know you're trying to get a leg up guys, but THIS IS RIDICULOUS! (winner of the worst thing said under a photo contest ever))

H_Ram lets it happen. 

For whatever reason, the dudes decided to let me in on their sometimes sweet sometimes not-so-sweet adventure in pizza reviewing.

Now, I think it's being quite generous to say that this is a 10-topping pizza. Personally, I don't think a pizza is a pizza if there isn't cheese on it, so while I do think it's nice to have multiple cheeses, I don't think that having Mozzarella and Parmesan entitles you to call those two toppings. They also call garlic and oregano toppings. If there were big hunks of fresh herbs on my pizza, fine, call it a topping, but when someone (okay, a machine) just shook a McCormick "Italian Spices" mix over a frozen pizza, that's not a topping. So, if we're being honest about it, it's got 6 toppings: pepperoni, sausage, peppers x3 (green, red, AND yellow!), and roasted red onion.

I can't say that their "Fresch-Bake (TM)" Tray was particularly successful, despite the gimmickiness. Call the local news investigative reporter to look into this, because the claims are not true--it does NOT bake the crust evenly. The outer areas were almost burnt by the time the middle was done. Despite that fact, though, I did like the crust. It was probably the best thing about the pizza (I realize this is a rather backhanded compliment).

4 toppings out of 10.

Black Olive Rap

Josh and I have lamented the lack of any green or black olives on any of the frozen pizzas we’ve had. From the humble veggie to the proud and mighty supreme, nary an olive can be found, save for one pizza. And to put some feeling into our on-going search and frustration for those of the vegetable kingdom we hold near and dear, I present to you a feature rap. Start the beat box in your head…

Grown on a tree,

A friend is missin’.

How expensive are they?

The pizza makers’ dissin’

They’re round and black

A little tasty treat,

A bit on the sour,

Come back to the beat…

We’ve seen lots of pies,

Veggie and supreme,

No olives could be found,

Pizza haters’ dream.

Newman couldn’t put out,

And Kashi went to rest,

Amy’s on the prowl,

Inside a sweater vest.

The Baron’s out a flyin’

Freschetta has no clue,

The CPK’s got no game,

But DiGiornio’s the one to do…

Olives on the pizza,

Josh and I like the best,

Garlic Bread Supreme

Gives our lives some zest.

There is a global shortage,

So few are black and green,

We’ll pay 12 clams a slice

To avoid this sight unseen.

Give us more damn olives,

We clamor in one voice,

Give us more damn olives,

We’re free—we have a choice!

Amy’s Organic Spinach Pizza

Dan needs a cold shower

I’ve besmitten two ladies in my life I’ve never met: the first is Diana Hacker, author of The Bedford Handbook, a grammar guide (I love the way she talks about compound adjectives and how to avoid run-on sentences), and now Amy. I don’t know Amy’s last name, so I’ll make one up: Langerhans. There was considerable debate between me and Josh over a couple of Izzy Clementine’s as to how old Ms. Langerhans is. His guess was that she was pretty old; I guessed late 30s because she wrote on the back of the box that her mom and grandma still prefer a certain kind of pizza in the present tense (thank you Diana, my love—meaning they are still kickin’ it and grams would probably be, you know, around 80). But what throws off the whole damn thing and probably gives credence to Josh’s guess is the picture of the back of the box.

Freschetta California-Style spicy chicken & feta cheese thin crust pizza

Dan requests you mail him cards and drugs

If you have a sneaking suspicion that a pizza’s going to give you the runs later that night, shouldn’t you walk away? I tried to, but the blog had to be representative, thus I had to get down at least one slice and I did. Sympathy emails and comments, along with a case of Immodium, would be appreciated.

Josh and I have been friends for about 15 years now and we’ve always gotten along. I’m afraid to say that Josh and I “agreed to disagree” on the rating of this pizza. I hope our friendship can recover in time for the next review.

As I’m sure Josh will tell you, the Freschetta brand has no clue about putting toppings on a pizza. For example, before we started this blog, Josh and I tried a Freschetta artichoke pizza…with 3 (yes only 3) artichokes on the whole thing. This pizza with chicken had about 6 pieces of chicken in an unevenly spread pattern on the pizza (see photo). I was checking out of the supermarket recently and saw a guy with a Freschetta in his hands. I sternly warned him to expect few and misplaced toppings, and with that, he hurried to the 12 items or less checkout lane to purchase his pizza.

Let me tell you how to make this pizza right in your very own home. Get some saltine crackers. Put some buffalo wing sauce on the cracker. Throw some feta cheese on it. The chicken is optional because we’ll assume you missed the mark. Bake it. And presto, you’re done!

My recommendation is to avoid this pizza if you can, but if you must try it for yourself, buy some hard liquor to quell whatever’s going to happen in your gut. (0.5 out of 10 pizzas)

Josh pens an SNL sketch to convey his feelings

Digiorno Rising Crust Spinach, Mushroom, and Garlic

Dan in real life

We heard some clamoring for more vegetable-oriented pizzas. And, Josh and I being people pleasers, try to do our best. If only DiGiornio could hear our cries for quality pizzas…

Let me see if I can anthropomorphize DiGiornio. DiGiornio is like the guy who works out his pecs and biceps to an extreme so he’s living in bulge city 90% of the time. Ask him to chop some wood and he’s good for about 10 minutes ‘cause his muscles are all show and he has no functional strength. In this case, the box represents the muscles—they look good—but the pizza’s like asking mini-muscles to bust up some tree stumps—nothin’ doin’.

I’d like to know where they get their stock photos from. Or maybe the cover photo is a real pizza that they made in the DiGiornio kitchens when they were trying to sell the top brass on selling this particular pizza. It’d be fair to call the mushrooms on the box “succulent” looking. Like their distant cousin, rat-pellet sausage droppings, the mushroom pieces on this pizza were like small shavings. If you had to describe what the mushrooms looked like to a police sketch artist based solely on the box, our mushrooms would be living free and at-large.

The pizza advertises that it’s also a spinach and garlic pizza. More accurately, there is a garlic butter sauce on the pizza, but no actual cloves or visible traces of it. The spinach, well, it made a cameo appearance tonight. However, shit white crust and seasoning-free everything were their usual laughers.

Nothing special, nothing great here. (4.5 pizzas out of 10)

Joshua in Wonderland

Alright, sometimes you just can’t review pizzas anymore. Sometimes you wake up and stare into the gray dawn and just say “what is it that I’m doing…”

Then you realize, that what you really need to be doing is writing quality jokes, so you can be a professional stand up comedian! Cause THOSE people know how to live! All alone on a stage, talking about all kinds of relationships.

So please, when you read the rest of this blog entry, picture me in one of those awesome
Seinfeld sports coats with the appropriate comedian shoes, a single light shines down upon me as tear into this pizza with some comedic gold fury! Also, read this next part while doing your best Woody Allen impression in your head.

Newmans Own Supreme Pizza

Dan's In Memoriam

Cool Hand Luke has done it again. The sauce, the peanut butter cups, the Newman O’s, the Fig Newmans. I admit to going through some Paul Newman mourning when he died about three years ago by purchasing many of the “Pa” and “Nell” Newman varieties (but at that time, no pie) for an entire week. By the way, how does Joanne Woodward become “Nell”? I digress…

The cover art around Paul Newman’s head has an interesting graphic of either a) a mozzarella ball; b) a silicone implant; c) a chunk of chalk. You might dismiss my observation as simply blog filler, but if it is indeed a mozzarella ball, then it’s the only duplicated pizza topping on the cover art, with a bowl of shredded cheese and also the ball. There are two tomatoes, but in the same form, and two sprigs of basil, also in the same form. Quite frankly, this wasn’t a four-cheese Newman’s Own pizza, which Josh and I will review at a later time. If it was, then I could understand the duplicate cheese toppings.

As far as the pie itself goes, let’s start with the sausages. Real, flavorful sausages that looked like ripped shards of meat, as sausages on a pie are intended to look. Real fire-roasted peppers. Real nitrate-free (soaked in celery juice concentrate) pepperonis. Onions, even! A “crust we can trust”. It’s minimally-processed and contains no artificial ingredients. Also, this pizza contains not a trace of soy, so hooray to eat any processed item without soy! This pizza has gotten my highest ranking out of any of this pizzas we’ve tasted thus far and is my fall-back pizza should I want to gag on any of the others and need some good eatin’. (read: Tombstone, Tony’s, etc) (9 out of 10 pizzas)

Josh Rants