We Tried Trader Joe’s New Gluten Free Fresh Pizza Dough and Here are Our Thoughts

Welcome to another slice of Trader Joe’s treasure hunting! For this review, we’re rolling out the red carpet for a superstar in the world of convenience and health: Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Fresh Pizza Dough. Whether you’re a seasoned chef or a kitchen newbie, this dough promises to turn your pizza night into a hassle-free, gluten-free fiesta. So, grab your rolling pins and your favorite toppings, and let’s find out if this dough rises to the occasion!

Trader Joe’s has had a long history of supporting alternative diets from Kosher to Vegetarian to Vegan and Gluten Free. There have been other gluten free pizza crusts in the store over the years but never has there been one that was just a lump of fresh dough that you could shape into your own pizza. Bear with me as this reivew/recipe will be quite long as we go through how to use the dough properly and my review and how to make a pizza with it.

Let me start off by saying that I am not Gluten Free but because of the amount of products that Trader Joe’s releases that are Gluten Free and how popular they are, I feel it’s my duty to review them with an unbiased eye.

Overview

Just like the other fresh doughs that Trader Joe’s sells, this one comes in the refrigerator section of the store, most likely in the cheese section. For years Trader Joe’s just had regular pizza dough and herbed. A long time ago they had whole wheat, which was my favorite, but obviously not everyone’s favorite so they took it off the shelf. If you are thinking, this is old news we’ve had gluten free pizza dough in our store for a while now, that’s true. Some regions had it already in what I think was a test and now it’s nationwide. We just got it a few weeks ago here in the Seattle area.

This gluten free fresh dough is $3.99, which is double the price of the dough with gluten in it, but it’s gluten free! Honestly, I don’t know where else I can buy gluten free pizza dough that is fresh except at Trader Joe’s.

This dough is meant to make one big or two little pizzas. For this review we decided to go for a big pizza that ended up being about 14″ wide.

Preparation

You’ll need three special pieces of equipment to pull this recipe off: a pizza stone, a pizza peel, and a rolling pin. You might need some rice flour or cornmeal to make sure the dough doesn’t stick to anything. I used rice flour for shaping the dough and corn meal for the pizza peel.

The directions on the bag say to take the dough out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before you are ready to use it. I would take it out at least an hour. This is a good time to stick your pizza stone in the oven and turn it on to 450 degrees. You want that pizza stone soaking up that heat. I would not try this recipe without a stone. I have a pizza steel, but I make a lot of regular pizza.

After the dough warms up for a while. I put down some rice flour and started rolling out the dough with a rolling pin. This dough has the consistency of pie dough. It is thick and cracks easily. If the edges crack, you can just squeeze the cracks and “heal” the problem.

After a couple of minutes rolling out, you may want to create a raised edge to hold on to after the pizza bakes. I just pinched the dough a bit to make a raised edge.

At this point the pizza is ready to add toppings and transfer to the peel before you stick it in the oven.

For this review, I just made a simple cheese pizza with Trader Joe’s marinara sauce and Quattro Formaggi and some dried herbs. I really just want to analyze the dough and crust so keeping the ingredients list minimal is a must not to add too many elements to the mix.

I used about 3/4 of a cup of sauce and about 2 cups of cheese but by all means, make this your own. I also sprinkled some generic Italian seasoning on this.

This dough does not stick like regular pizza dough, so it’s quite easy to slip it off the peel into the oven on the pizza stone with a little bit of cornmeal or other gluten free flour.

I followed the directions for the temperature at 450 f and as I mentioned before I heated up my oven when I took the dough out of the fridge, so about an hour before baking the pizza.

Maybe because I had a pizza steel, it didn’t take 15 minutes to bake which seems quite long at these temperatures so keep an eye on it. Mine came out around 9 minutes.

Texture and Taste

Once I felt the pizza was cooked enough by looking at the color of the crust for a nice medium brown color with some ridges almost going to black. The bottom of the pizza was a dark brown color when I pulled it.

It looks almost like a wheat flour pizza dough except there are no bubbles, which is to be expected since it’s sans gluten but from a visual standpoint, it looks like a regular pizza!

After letting it cool off for a bit, I used my pizza cutting wheel to make regular slices. The crust was crisp on the edge and crunchy on the bottom. Which is good in my book!

Now for the real test, how does it taste? if someone gave this to me blindly and I had no idea what it was, I would say not bad, not great but passable. On par with a frozen pizza from the grocery store with gluten. The crust has a nice texture with some crunch on the bottom and the edges, which I like. There isn’t that chewy texture you get with wheat flour, it was a little gummier but not too bad. I’ve had much worse. Trader Joe’s lists yeast twice as an ingredient. Once as just yeast and another time as deactivated yeast. Both bring a slight yeasty flavor to the dough. I think it’s a great accomplishment that Trader Joe’s could mass produce this dough.

Pros and Cons

Just a couple of quick pros and cons…

Pros: it’s gluten free pizza dough and it actually works!

Cons: Slight gummy texture, slightly sweeter than regular pizza dough and also different to shape if you are used to wheat based dough.

I don’t have anyone in my life that is gluten free right now (I have had one in the past) and I don’t really have a need to be gluten free but I am more than happy to test these products out and see how they compare to products containing gluten.

If you are craving a fresh gluten free pizza from dough that you buy at the store, then this dough is for you! Trader Joe’s takes the guesswork out of putting the ingredients together, which can be more challenging than with wheat flour based pizza, and for the price of $3.99 where are you going to get a gluten free pizza at your local pizza shop at this price? I think all the ingredients together this pizza was about $6 or less.

At the end of the day, this wasn’t bad pizza. It wasn’t great by any means but it’s serviceable pizza when you throw in there that it’s gluten free, then this could possibly be the best pizza you ever make that’s gluten free!