Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Cheese Pizza Cauliflower Crust review. You knew it was just a matter of time before this became a thing. Trader Joe’s has been moving to more and more gluten free foods. Never a company to not follow a trend, Trader Joe’s is firmly following the Gluten Free trend right now. Not only do they have cauliflower pizza crusts, but they also have kale and also squash crusts. At some point, like the Cookie Butter craze, it will fizzle out.
But, as I mentioned, they finally came out with a fully assembled pizza on a cauliflower crust and from the box, it looks delicious! So, what we have here is a basic cheese pizza on a crust made out of cauliflower, mozzarella cheese, potato flour, chickpea flour, and brown rice flour. Which I am sure would be pretty tasty on its own, but they top it with a basic tomato sauce and mix of mozzarella and provolone cheeses.
The directions to make this are pretty typical for a frozen pizza. Heat the oven to 425f and put the pizza in for 10-12 minutes. Make sure you put this on a baking sheet. The cheese and sauce go right up to the edge and will melt off the side and burn on the bottom of your oven. It also helps to crisp up the bottom of the pizza crust.
Baking it smells just like any other frozen cheese pizza and when the edges start to get brown, pull it out. I think I left mine in a minute or two longer than I should’ve. The cheese on top got a little too brown, but not burned. Moving this pizza from the baking sheet to a cutting board was a little tough. A small pizza peel or a large spatula would help here. The crust did stick to the baking sheet a little, but nothing too bad. A wheat based crust probably wouldn’t have stuck like this. I put it on a cutting board and cut it with my pizza wheel and let it cool off for a few minutes.
First, the crust is a little soft in that it doesn’t hold its structure as well as a wheat based crust. Since there is no gluten, there is nothing to hold it together and form holes as you see in bread. But it held together with good enough for me to lift it and take a bite out of it. It tasted almost exactly like every other American frozen pizza out there. Which I guess is a good thing. Trader Joe’s obviously didn’t want to stray to far from an American classic. The sauce and cheese are a step above the cheap stuff in your normal American grocery store frozen section. They have a nice flavor. The crust is weird though. It was soft and chewy but in a gummy way. It was almost like uncooked wheat dough. It got a little crispy on the bottom, but the main part of the cauliflower crust was gummy. I think that just comes with the territory of a gluten free crust. You give up one thing for another.
All in all, if you really don’t want gluten (I for one, love gluten), then this is a great alternative to a wheat based pizza crust. Even my kids ate a couple of slices before figuring out something was different. Which can’t be all bad!
INGREDIENTS
CAULIFLOWER PIZZA CRUST (CAULIFLOWER, LOW MOISTURE WHOLE MILK MOZZARELLA CHEESE [MILK, CHEESE CULTURES, SALT, MICROBIAL RENNET], POTATO FLOUR, CHICKPEA FLOUR, BROWN RICE FLOUR [BROWN RICE, STABILIZED RICE BRAN], EGG WHITES, XANTHAN GUM, SPICES), PIZZA SAUCE (TOMATO PUREE, SALT, SUGAR, EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL, SPICES, GARLIC POWDER), MOZZARELLA CHEESE (MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, MICROBIAL RENNET), PROVOLONE CHEESE (MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, MICROBIAL RENNET), OREGANO, ROSEMARY.
CONTAINS MILK , EGG.