Trader Joe’s Organic Pizza Crust

Trader Joe’s (Giotto’s) Organic Pizza Crust made in Italy. It’s early February 2014 and Trader Joe’s is undergoing another one of those purge old and restock new products. This is in conjunction with the new Fearless Flyer that they just pushed out and also with the new iPhone app. I am seeing a lot of new and interesting products so look for new reviews soon.

When I saw these new pizza crusts in the freezer section, I was dancing a little jig. I love it when Trader Joe’s gives us a new pizza product! I looked at the package and sure enough, it’s from Italy so I was psyched to get it home and try it. There are two of them and I thought it was frozen dough that you had to let thaw out and bake. When I got it home and opened the bag they came in, I realized that they are “par baked” crust, ala Boboli. I remember when Boboli came out on the market years ago and I was smitten with them for a while. Finally, I can make decent pizza without making my own dough. But the love affair was over fairly quickly when I realized that making my own dough was easy and much better.

The first problem I encountered when I opened up the bag of Trader Joe’s Organic Pizza Crusts was that they had big cracks in them. If you can imagine freezing some dough solid and dropping it, it would crack into pieces. That’s what happened to mine. I think in part because the crust is so thin. It’s really like a glorified wheat tortilla or pita bread. At least that’s what it looks like. Anyway, I follow the directions take it out of the packaging, and let it thaw for 15 minutes. I thought maybe I could “heal” the cracks by pushing them together like raw down, but since it’s cooked all I can try to do is reassemble them. I managed to piece them together.

In the meantime, I have been warming up my oven with pizza stone at 425 for about 45 minutes. Want to make sure the stone is nice and hot. I put the pizza crust on a pizza peel and make a simple cheese pizza with Trader Joe’s Pizza Sauce and Quattro Formaggio sprinkled with a little dried oregano. Keep it simple, we are here mainly for the crust. Bake for about 12 minutes until the cheese starts to brown and the bottom of the pizza is brown.

I pulled out the pizza and let it cool down a bit. I have to say I was pretty disappointed with this pizza crust. It had a chewy, leathery texture and not very crispy. Probably when you bake something twice like this it overcooks it. The crust had no “lift” meaning no bubbles of expansion. More like a flatbread than a pizza. Like I said before, it was like making a pizza on a tortilla or pita bread. I was not impressed and I probably won’t ever buy the Trader Joe’s Par Baked Organic Pizza Crusts again. Get the pizza dough from the fridge section. It will only take you 5 more minutes to make a pizza and the results are far better!

I am going to give this Trader Joe’s Organic Pizza Crusts only 5 Bells!

NOTE: As far as we know, this product is discontinued.