Trader Joe’s Organic Wood Fired Sicilian Style Pizza

Trader Joe’s Organic Wood Fired Sicilian Style Pizza. I’m taking a quick break from the onslaught of holiday goodies from Trader Joe’s today. There are only so many cookies a person can eat! I decided to pop a pizza in the oven for lunch the other day and  I went to my stash of Trader Joe’s frozen pizza in the freezer and pulled a relatively new arrival at TJ’s. That is the Trader Joe’s Organic Wood Fired Sicilian style pizza. Long time readers know I am pizza geek and I make pizza all the time from scratch. A lot of times I use Trader Joe’s fresh pizza dough when I don’t have the time to do a scratch pizza dough. I am always curious about pizza of any type so I do buy a fair amount of the frozen pizzas at Trader Joe’s and many of them are quite good, like the Trader Joe’s Gluten Free pizza I reviewed a few weeks back.

I’m not sure what a Sicilian Styled pizza really means and I looked it up as best as I could on google and there are a few different styles. Many people think that it is a big square or rectangular pizza that is quite thick but back in Sicily they make pizza more like a stuffed pizza with a top layer of dough, but as is the case all over the place, pizza is highly variable and open to interpretation. I do think, however, that this pizza from Trader Joe’s is probably not anything close to authentic, but nevertheless it is still a good frozen pizza.

This pizza is a Product of Italy and they say it is cooked in wood fired ovens. Consider how many pizzas they ship to Trader Joe’s, I kind of really doubt it’s like those little wood fired ovens you see at chic trendy pizzerias everywhere.  If you’ve shopped at Trader Joe’s for any time you’ll see that they have a wide variety of pizzas in the frozen and fridge sections. Many of them are Products of Italy and boost that they are wood fired. My bet that this one comes from the same source as those other ones. (BTW, why is this not a Trader Giotto’s branded product? I don’t get why they are not consistent with that name!)

This pizza is a Red Pepper, Provolone, Pearl Mozzarella on a red sauce pizza. 100% Organic.  The kicker to this one is that you get this little pouch of spicy pepper olive oil that you drizzle on the pizza. The instructions don’t say to put it on before or after, but I opted for after. The oil is quite spicy and I didn’t think I needed to put the whole packet on the pizza. Anyway, it’s pretty standard baking. Preheat the oven to 425 and then pop the pizza in straight on the wire rack for about 15 minutes until the cheese is all melted and starting to bubble. I pulled the pizza out and drizzled the spicy olive oil on the pizza. As always, I recommend using this pizza peel to get your pizzas out of the oven.

I cut the pizza up and let it cool down and I could smell the sweet red peppers and the spicy olive oil wafting up from the pizza and I was exceptionally hungry when I made and I ended up eating the whole damn thing. The crust is that kind of crispy crunchy crust that many of Trader Joe’s frozen pizzas have. Almost a little too crunchy for me but pretty good taste. I liked the red peppers and the mix of provolone and mozzarella. I’m not a big fan of 100% mozzarella cheese pizza because mozzarella just doesn’t have enough flavor for me. I thought the use of the spicy olive oil pack was novel and I don’t think it makes much of a difference if you put it on before the oven or not but I do like a little heat on my pizza.

All in all, I really like this pizza for what it is. It’s never going to be as good as fresh, but for a frozen pizza I really liked it! It’s just frosting on the cake to have it 100% Organic. I’m going to rate the Trader Joe’s Sicilian Style Pizza 8 Bells!