Test: what is the best frozen pizza in The Netherlands?

Everyone craves some tasty, cheesy and crunchy pizza from time to time, but as a student you don’t always have the financial needs for a restaurant or delivery pizza. So go for the next best thing: a pizza from the supermarket! What is the best frozen pizza in The Netherlands?

My friends Bea (Italian), Inez (German), Maria (Spanish) and me (Ester, Italian) met up to test the best pizza you can find in Groningen’s supermarkets. We chose six different margheritas, because most brands have this classic pizza, and that would make it easy and fair to compare the different brands. On top of that, it’s also the cheapest kind of pizza you can find in supermarkets, which can come in handy when you are low on cash at the end of the month.

So what is the best frozen pizza in the Netherlands and how did we test it? The consistency of the dough, the smell, its cheesiness and tomato sauce were the main aspects we compared. Some of them were a complete disaster, others really pleasant surprises.

Dr Oetker Classica
The first pizza looked great and crunchy, but unfortunately, the dough is soft. Maria was not impressed. ‘It feels like chewing gum.’ Only the edges are crunchy and dry, which makes biting deeper into it not really enjoyable. ‘The taste of the dough is okay, but nothing remarkable,’says Bea. The tomato sauce was a slight surprise – it was tasty and likeable. Out of all the sauces, this was probably the closest to the one you could find in a real pizza place. But the opposite is true for the cheese. It did not taste anything close to real cheese, it added nothing to the taste and could have just been left off all together.

Albert Heyn
The pizza Krokante of Albert Heyn was the thinnest of all the six we tried, and the sauce covered the base until the very edge of the crust. However, the pizza tasted sweet, which is weird for a pizza.  Bea feels tricked. ‘These pizza makers are mean people, there are literally only two pieces of cheese on it. The photo on the box is just a joke…’ But it was a good deal for the money, two pizzas for less than three euros, so the expectations were not high at all. Overall, it did not taste like much.

Dr Oetker Ristorante
From the very moment we took this pizza out of the box, we were impressed with how it looked. There was a lot of cheese, making it really yummy. The consistency of the crust was really crunchy, but not dry. And the width of it is just perfect. The dough, as soon as it entered our mouths, melted like chocolate truffle. It was crunchy on the edge and soft everywhere else, just as it is supposed to be. But even this great pizza has a flaw: there was not a lot of sauce, and the little bit of sauce it had tasted a bit too sweet. It was the most expensive of the six we bought, but the money was absolutely worth it.

Plus
As we took it out from the oven a vivid smell of cheese conquered the room. We took the knife and started to slice it. The crunch was hard to cut, but quite easy to chew. It was looking quite promising, but in the end it was a disappointment: it tasted like nothing. It tasted like plastic. None of us could finish it, that’s how bad it was.

Trattoria Alfredo (Lidl)
If Ristorante was the one looking the most fancy, this was the opposite. It was a frozen pizza, and it sure looked like it as well. As it left the oven, it smelled like both butter and soap. It was not great, not even for a frozen pizza. If a smell could make you feel dizzy, this was the one. The base was super thin and covered by an ‘extremely weird’- quoting one of the Italians – tomato sauce. Inez approved it, but Bea, Maria and me left most of it on the plate. The cheese and crust were acceptable, but the tomato sauce was shockingly bad.

Jumbo
Like the one from Plus, this one really smelled like cheese, but it looked definitely more appetizing than the previous pizza. It was difficult for the knife to cut it though. About the taste the jury was divided, Maria and Ester defined it as ‘raw bread’, while Inez and Bea thought it was ‘just fine’. So it was not that great, but considering the cheap price. it was acceptable.

Final Ranking
After comparing all of them, their taste, appearance and cheesiness, we came to a conclusion. Some of them were really similar, both negatively and positively. But the best frozen pizza in the Netherlands is: the Ristorante!  This might seem a tiny bit unfair, because this pizza is a lot more expensive than the other ones. Still, we think it’s totally worth it to spend a little more money on this pizza. Quality over quantity! But if you really lack cash, skip our top two, and go for the Albert Heyn box with two pizzas…

6. Plus Trattoria
5. Trattoria Alfredo Deliziosa
4. Jumbo Pizza Bueno
3. Albert Heijn Pizza Krokante
2. Dr Oetker Classica
1. Dr Oetker Ristorante