It may seem impossible to mess up frozen pizza from a box, but there are some definite dos
and don'ts. Are you cutting the pizza too soon? Not baking at the right temperature?
Keep watching for what not to do.
Sometimes when you pull the frozen pizza out of the box and remove the plastic sleeve that's
usually encasing it, the toppings are all over the place. Your instinct might be to
just shove them all back to the center, or get them scattered as evenly across the surface
as possible if they've all gone to one side. Even if this topping side shift hasn't happened
when you pull the pizza out, it's actually still a good idea to methodically rearrange
the toppings before baking it.
Per Taste of Home, if you envision where the cutter is going to slice through when the
pizza is frozen, you can easily assemble the toppings so that you guarantee space for a
quote "clean cut" when you slice. If you employ this hack correctly, when you slice the pizza,
the pizza cutter doesn't have to cut through anything except the bread, sauce, and cheese.
This trick yields a lot less mess and whole pepperonis still intact.
It might sound odd to not follow the exact instructions on the side of the frozen pizza
box but hear us out on this one. You know how pizzeria pizza is always the perfect texture
of crust combined with cheese melted to the ideal consistency? A big component of how
they pull that off in restaurants is an industrial oven that's designed to get extremely hot
for cooking pizzas.
You can replicate this at home without an official pizza oven if you crank up the temperature
of your kitchen's oven to 550 degrees, according to the pizza experts from Giordanos Pizza.
Then just bake the pizza for about five to eight minutes, as opposed to the usual 12
to 15 minutes.
While it may be tempting to slide that pizza cutter right into that pie as soon as you
pull it out of the oven, try to hold off on cutting into it too soon. There are a few
reasons why you might mess up the pizza if you cut into it the minute it's done.
For one, the cheese and toppings need a chance to set. The suggestion from The Kitchen Warriors
is to let the pizza sit at room temperature for just three minutes before cutting into
it. That way the toppings and cheese are still piping hot but set enough to where you won't
pull the pizza cutter up with a lot of melted cheese along with it.
Also, when you cut into the pizza too soon, you run the risk of the oil from the cheese
running into the crust, soaking it, and therefore making it less crispy. Oh, and also, your
pizza isn't gonna taste as good if the roof of your mouth is burned, so it's best to wait
if you can.
Pizza stones may seem like the tools of advanced pizza chefs, not someone popping in a pepperoni
DiGiorno at home, but they are actually a very easy way to enhance the taste of any
frozen pizza too. Pizza stones serve to imitate the magic of a real-deal brick oven that a
legit pizza place would use because the stone easily takes in high heat then keeps that
heat in for an extended time.
If you are going to use a pizza stone with a frozen pizza, make sure to preheat the stone
in the oven for at least 30 minutes after the oven has reached the temperature you set
it to and to let the pizza thaw to room temperature before you place it on the hot stone. Having
a pizza peel on hand would also be helpful for safely retrieving the hot, hot pizza from
the stone when it's done.
"Who wants cheese?"
"Me, please."
There is nothing wrong with wanting to add some extra cheese to a frozen pizza but there
is definitely a wrong way to do it. It's important to keep that in mind when you add the extra
cheese. Serious Eats recommends sprinkling it on halfway through the cooking process,
but the placement can also depend on the type of cheese you're adding.
For example, per Cooking Chops, most frozen pizzas already come with a layer of shredded
mozzarella so you can probably get away with adding it before you place the pizza in the
oven. However, if you're adding cheddar cheese to the frozen pizza, it cooks a lot faster
so you may want to add it on when you hit the halfway mark of baking.
Adding extra vegetable toppings to frozen pizza isn't necessarily a bad idea but you
can really mess up the final product if you don't do a little prep work on the veggies
prior to adding them. Basically, the vegetables need to be sliced, softened, and/or roasted
first, and the exact prep will depend on the vegetable.
For instance, The Guardian relays that mushrooms can end up disastrous if you don't sauté
them with some butter first to soften them. Onions will emerge even more raw-seeming than
before if you don't sweat them prior to adding them on top of the pizza. Bell peppers should,
in a perfect world, be both skinned and roasted in advance of going onto the pizza.
Part of the appeal of frozen pizza is all the hard work is done for you. It's convenient
and quick already so why add more work? Well, certain tweaks are less than a minute of work
so they're worth the effort. You can actually take the frozen pizza from mediocre to Insta-worthy
by supplying the pie with an extra dash of herbs prior to cooking it.
Add some dried or fresh oregano to frozen pizza to enhance the flavor. Thyme is also
a great add-in because it's kind of sweet and therefore a nice contrast to the savory
cheese on the pizza. Garlic makes everything better but it's technically a vegetable unless
you want to go with the powdered kind, in which case we'll toss it in as a contender
for the added herbs on pizza. A little salt and pepper never hurt either.
One of the most basic ways you might be messing up your frozen pizza is not utilizing the
grill, if you've got one. Sure, the oven is the standard go-to for cooking a frozen pizza
but the grill is virtually just as easy and the results might really wow you.
According to The Kitchn, this hack works best with a 10-inch pizza. Make sure the grill
is preheated for about 15 minutes on the high setting. Then add the frozen pizza, reduce
the heat, and cover the grill. Keep watch on it, but the cooking time frame should be
about 10 to 12 minutes. Place the grilled pizza onto a cutting board with a spatula
as soon as the cheese has fully melted and you see that good char has developed around
the crust.
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