Welcome to the first supermarket pizza review! Hopefully, this is the start of a longer series of reviews. I am not going to lie, the whole point of this website is actually so I can talk about pizza. Mrs Reviews might disagree but let’s not worry about that.
Pizza is my favourite food of all time. I am constantly craving it and thinking about it. Yes, its a little weird but I don’t care. I also make pizza from scratch at home and have my own pizza sauce recipe. That is more than enough credentials to review supermarket pizzas and find out the best one. I am going to start with each supermarket’s most premium style pizzas. These reviews might be very critical because my expectations and standards are high. I think you have gathered how serious I am for pizza!
So firstly we are starting with ASDA’s Woodfired Extra Special Buffalo Mozzarella and Tomato Pizza. I picked this up for about £2.60 from the frozen section. Off the bat, there are a couple of things that stood out for me. Firstly on the back of the box ASDA claim this pizza was expertly woodfired in Parma, Italy. They have the colours for a Neopolitan pizza but I wondered how a woodfired pizza retains the quality for a frozen product. The second thing to look out for is if the buffalo mozzarella and basil pesto toppings were any good.
So this pizza was oven-baked on a rainy Friday night after a long week at work. A classic pizza setting. My initial observation was that the pizza looked crispy but I noticed the lack of cheese to tomato sauce ratio. The buffalo mozzarella didn’t melt and spread out through the pizza. The mozzarella seemed very cheap. The base of the pizza looked dry and didn’t show any signs of being woodfired like some charring as you’d find on pizzas.
So what about the actual taste test? After a few bites, it became evident that the tomato sauce lacked flavouring and was quite bland. For me, a good sauce has a balance between acidity and sweetness with some background aroma of herbs. In contrast, this sauce had none of these qualities. The pizza base was as dry as it looked and was very chewy. I enjoy eating the crust on a pizza but the bread here didn’t stand out at all. The buffalo mozzarella, as mentioned previously, felt quite processed and had no creaminess. The only positive was that the basil pesto which had a little punch of flavour.
We reluctantly tried to finish the pizza. There was nothing at all standing out about this pizza, given that it’s meant to be a premium product and priced to reflect that. If you’re buying a frozen non-branded supermarket pizza, you’re better off getting something cheaper.
All in all, this Woodfired Extra Special Buffalo Mozzarella and Tomato Pizza was a letdown. I did see that ASDA have a chilled version of their extra special range so I will give that one a go. But this one gets a thumbs down for me. However, there are a lot more supermarket pizza’s still out there and I am coming for all of them!