We started reviewing the Red Baron brand not that long ago here at Freezer Meal Frenzy. And the thing is, instead of starting in the obvious place — with their pizzas — we went with something a little weirder and checked out a sandwich instead.
And then, there were weeks of silence on the Red Baron front. Yes, we kept publishing daily reviews, but we didn’t return to the Red Baron brand for a suspiciously long time. We’re not really sure what happened; we guess that rascally Red Baron just slipped our radar.
But now we’re finally doing this. We’re going to review an actual Red Baron pizza, the Red Baron Brick Oven Crust Meat-Trio Pizza. We’re huge fans of frozen pizza, but most of our staffers grew up with DiGiorno over Red Baron. We’re honestly not as familiar with the Red Baron brand as we are with many of the other brands we review.
So let’s dig in and see what this pizza is all about.
If you’ve ever cooked a frozen pizza before, this one shouldn’t give you any trouble. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, then pop in the pizza. The box recommends that you cook it directly on the rack, but it also gives you instructions for a pan. We used a baking sheet for this pizza, so we went with the Pan Method instructions. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out our package scans at the bottom of this review.)
So now let’s dig into this and see what lifelong DiGiorno-eaters think of this Red Baron pizza.
Right away, we’re not sure we’re fans of the crust. It has a gravelly texture to it, which we think is an attempt at covering up the fact that it’s really just a lower-quality crust. Aside from the texture, this kind of reminds us of Domino’s pizza after it’s been sitting in the fridge for a few days and then gets reheated. It has that not really soggy, but kind of dense and mushy middle to it.
We do appreciate the fact that this three-meat pizza actually uses three distinctively different kinds of meat, when some others go for pepperoni, sausage, and hamburger. What’s the difference between sausage and hamburger? Well, We suppose different people will have different takes on this, but when you’re chomping down on a meaty slice of pizza, the difference feels negligible to us. Here, though, you’ve got pepperoni, sausage, and cubes of ham.
The pepperoni is thinner than we were expecting. We almost feel like if you held a piece of pepperoni up to a light, that you could probably see through it. That’s not the worst thing in the world, but if you prefer a thicker pepperoni, Red Baron might not be your jam. As for the sausage and ham, the sausage ends up a bit too dry, and the ham really isn’t anything special here — we were honestly surprised by how bland the ham is, considering that ham tends to be a more flavorful meat. The meat on this pizza is just alright, we’d say.
We could have definitely used more sauce, though what’s here isn’t amazing. This certainly isn’t that deliciously spicy stuff that you’d find on a Lotzza Motzza pizza; this tastes more like a Totino’s-style sauce to us.
According to the box, a quarter of this pizza is a serving, which contains 320 calories (130 from fat) and 810 mg of sodium. That means the full pizza has 1,280 calories (520 from fat) and 3,240, and if you eat half a pizza, you’re looking at 640 calories (260 from fat) and 1,620 mg of sodium. That’s not the worst we’ve ever seen, but this pizza is also surprisingly less filling than you’d expect for something covered in so much ham.
The Red Baron Brick Oven Crust Meat-Trio Pizza tastes surprisingly low in quality to us. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by eating too much of Brew Pub’s fantastic Lotzza Motzza pizzas, but even then, we’d gladly take a DiGiorno or a Bellatoria pizza over Red Baron. We know some people might disagree, but we’d rank Red Baron as slightly below Bellatoria on a pizza hierarchy, though still above Totino’s.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen pizza, check out our package scans below.
