One of our favorite foods to review in the entire world is the Lotzza Motzza line of frozen pizzas. The thing is, Lotzza Motzza isn’t a brand; it’s a sub-line from the Brew Pub brand, which itself is under the umbrella of Bernatello’s Foods. For us, though, Lotzza Motzza really does feel like a brand, and we’re pretty sure that if we asked a random sampling of 100 Midwesterners, more of them would recognize Lotzza Motzza than Brew Pub.
But very little of the information (or our hypothesis) in the previous paragraph is important enough to change the way we feel about these tasty, tasty pies. So today, we’re excited to be checking out something that’s Lotzza Motzza-adjacent, the Brew Pub Hearty Artisan Crust Sausage & Pepperoni Pizza.
We’re no strangers to the Brew Pub line, of course. In the past, we’ve reviewed the four-cheese and supreme versions of this very same pie. Today, though, we’re tasting the classic sausage-‘n-pep combo.
Cooking this is pretty simple. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, then cook the pizza for 20 minutes or so. We found 21 minutes to be the sweet spot here. The instructions say to place the pizza directly on the oven rack, but we always use a baking sheet when we cook a pizza, and we’ve never had a problem with this. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the package, scroll down to the bottom of this review and check out the package scan.)
Okay, if you’ve ever read one of our Brew Pub pizza reviews, you probably already guessed that we were going to love this one. In fact, we knew we were going to love it before we even cooked it up. That said, we do still owe it to our readers to actually taste the thing and give our honest impressions. But why would we skip the tasting part? That’s our favorite part of this whole process!
The main thing that separates the Hearty Artisan Crust line with the Lotzza Motzza line is the crust. Instead of having that super-thin pub-style crust, this has that thicker hand-tossed crust, more like a DiGiorno crust. Of course, this stuff is better than a DiGiorno crust, with the perfect consistency and subtle hints of sweetness. It’s good stuff, and we really love it.
And then there’s the sauce. We’re pretty sure this is the same slightly spicy sauce that Brew Pub uses for their Lotzza Motzza pizzas, but we really can’t complain about that because it’s a really good sauce. And with the sausage-and-pepperoni combo, it really works well.
The sausage, of course, is amazing. It might be the topping that Brew Pub does best (besides the cheese, but we’ll talk about that in a bit). It’s a really flavorful meat that’s juicy and just a little bit spicy, which is why it pairs so dang well with that sauce. We’re less impressed by the pepperoni, which tastes fine but is a little drier than we’d like it to be, but it’s still not bad.
The icing on the cake is the cheese. Brew Pub piles on an ambitious amount of mozzarella here, making this stretchy, cheesy, and oh-so-craveable. If you discovered Brew Pub through the Lotzza Motzza line, then you’re probably expecting a generous cheese portion. This pizza doesn’t disappoint. This isn’t quite as loaded as its Lotzza Motzza brethren, but it’s still enough to get cheese enthusiasts smiling.
The sad, sad news is that this pizza isn’t made for dieters. With 350 calories (130 from fat) and 720 mg of sodium per serving, you might be tricked into thinking this isn’t really all that bad. However, that’s just 1/6 of the pizza. Are you going to eat 1/6 of the pizza for a meal? Probably not. (Anyone who can manage this tiny, tiny serving has way more self-control than we do.) If you eat half the pizza, you’re up to 1,050 calories (390 from fat) and a whopping 2,160 mg of sodium. We’ve said this before, but anything from the Brew Pub line is going to be a cheat-day meal rather than something you’ll eat every day.
What can we say? The Brew Pub Hearty Artisan Crust Sausage & Pepperoni Pizza is an amazing pizza for those looking for a thicker crust. We do prefer our beloved Lotzza Motzza pies to the Hearty Artisan Crust line, but we still think these are better than a vast majority of the stuff you’ll find in the freezer aisle at your local grocery store.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen pizza, check out our package scan below.
