Trader Joe's Organic Family Size Cheese & Tomato Pizza

A new frozen pizza from Trader Joe's - I spied this for the first time two weeks ago - is always going to get my attention. There is of course no guarantee that they will be good, but the odds are better than even; TJ's has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt over the years.

I love this. 

"For crispier crust, bake an additional minute." 

You know, in case you do not understand how ovens work. 

"Try using this pizza as a base for your favorite pizza toppings." 

Translation: We know this is a boring pizza but if you add tasty ingredients to it, it will be better. 

I was not impressed with the size. If your family is larger than one person, I don't know how you can consider this "family size." (I had no trouble eating it myself.)

I suppose if your family is two people and you share a salad and a vegetable, you could split this. 

Fortunately, things picked up considerably after cooking the pizza. The sauce is delicious, reminiscent of freshly-made sauce from a restaurant or local pizzeria rather than the clunky, salty, straight-from-a-can pizza sauce that you often find with other brands.

The crust was light and airy and the cheeses actually tasted like cheese, not merely some highly-processed version that you have spent your life avoiding since Grilled Cheese Day in your elementary school cafeteria.

I would not sully this pizza by adding a meat topping, though some fresh basil or perhaps chili flakes would be a welcome addition.

This is slightly more expensive than your average Trader Joe's pizza ($5.99), but even so, it's still a better value than any almost any other brand.

I have opted never to rate a pizza with a half-star (or slice, as the case may be), as that always seems like a cop-out. It has not been an issue until this pizza. It is better than my three-slice rating, but I felt like I would be overrating it a tad to give four slices.

Then I realized two things: 1) It's a blog about frozen pizza. Don't take yourself so seriously. And 2) It's Trader Joe's. If any company deserves to be bumped up slightly, they do.

THE RATING: 🍕🍕🍕 🍕