We have a tendency to compare every frozen pizza against DiGiorno. For us, we see the DiGiorno brand as the middle ground — pizzas that are better than DiGiorno’s tend to be more gourmet-focused, while pizzas that aren’t as good as DiGiorno tend to be more budget-friendly.
But we realized that this point of comparison isn’t always useful. For example, most of the Bellatoria pizzas we’ve reviewed are of the thin-crust variety, and we’ve been comparing them against the rising crust that DiGiorno uses. We recently realized the error of our ways when we checked out the Bellatoria Breadcrumb Artisan Crust Supreme Pizza, which is way, way better than we expected, and completely shifted the balance of pizza power in our minds. We’re really coming around to the Bellatoria brand now that we’re leaving their thin crust behind.
But the real test is to compare one of Bellatoria’s Rising Crust pizzas against DiGiorno’s Rising Crust pizzas. So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re finally digging into the Rising Crust side of this line with the Bellatoria Rising Crust Supreme Pizza.
Now, we probably don’t even need to tell you how to cook this — the process is pretty much what you’d expect from a frozen pizza (though the temp might be slightly higher than you’re used to). Simply preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, then pop the pizza in for 18 to 24 minutes. For softer crust, you can use a baking sheet (which is what we did). And that’s all there is to it. (If you want to read the full cooking instructions straight off the box, check out the package scans at the bottom of this review.)
This actually comes out kind of sloppy. Once we cut ours into slices, we noticed that it was completely falling apart. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. In fact, some of the best pizzas ever are incredibly sloppy. But you should know beforehand that you’re going to want to have some napkins on hand for this.
So let’s talk about that crust. The DiGiorno comparison really does work here, as this crust is very similar. We think that this one might have just a little more flavor than a DiGiorno crust, but it’s hard to say without having both of them back to back.
The thing that makes Bellatoria pizzas really pop, though, is the sauce. They use a sweeter tomato sauce, which really gives them their flavor. That doesn’t work for every pizza combination, but a supreme pizza with a sweeter sauce really gets the job done, in our opinion.
Another interesting choice here is the addition of ham, which we don’t usually see on supreme pizzas, but we really love the sentiment. It doesn’t really work in practice as well as it does on paper, though, as this meat ends up a little rubbery around the edges, and it doesn’t have as much flavor as the sausage or pepperoni. We were kind of surprised by how bland it is, and we hope Bellatoria addresses this, because otherwise this is a fantastic pizza.
And, of course, you’ve also got a lot of familiar ingredients, like bell peppers and olives. We’ve done a fair amount of talking about these in our previous Bellatoria review, so we won’t repat ourselves here. The short version is that we don’t care for olives (and these ones are the more flavorful green olives as opposed to the black olives we find on a lot of similar pizzas), and that the peppers and onions are great complements for a pizza like this.
Obviously, this is not a pizza for dieters. The package recommends 1/6 of the pizza as a serving size, which puts you at 310 calories (100 from fat) and 770 mg of sodium. That means a half pizza contains 930 calories (300 from fat) and a whopping 2,310 mg of sodium. Yikes!
The Bellatoria Rising Crust Supreme Pizza is a fantastic frozen pizza that has some minor flaws. While we think the ham could be better and we’d personally get rid of the olives and replace them with mushrooms, we can’t deny that we really enjoyed this pizza. Even if Bellatoria doesn’t address our gripes, this pizza is definitely worth trying — so long as you can spare a cheat day on your diet.
To learn more about the nutrition content, ingredients, or cooking instructions for this frozen pizza, check out our package scans below.
