Category: Reviews

Convenience, accessibility, price… there are so many reasons to love frozen pizza, and lots of people might also consider a crispy, cracker-like crust to be one of them. But buyer beware, that is not what you’ll get with DiGiorno’s new Fully Stuffed Crust.

I bought the Double Pepperoni variety, which, truthfully, I had cynically assumed was just a marketing gimmick to make run-of-the-mill pepperoni sound twice as exciting. I was pleased to realize that the name does, in fact, refer to two distinct types of pepperoni, “sliced” (the usual rounds) and “diced” (little chunks that reminded me of the julienne-cut Canadian bacon from Papa John’s Triple Bacon Pizza). If you prefer your pizza with an additional exciting adjective, you can also opt for Ultimate Three Meat.

I don’t think I need to dwell too long on the standard elements here: the cheese on top is mild and chewy, the pepperoni is greasy and aggressively meaty-tasting (I found the diced bits to be notably tender too, almost melt-in-your-mouth), the sparingly applied red sauce is flavorful if a bit watery, and the crust is yeasty and satisfying. My particular pie actually reminded me of Pizza Hut’s The Edge, with the toppings extending right to the end of every slice. I’m not sure if that’s a core part of the Fully Stuffed Crust brand or if I just got lucky, but either way, I’m happy! I sometimes find eating a dry, hard pizza crust a bit of a chore, but this was its own pleasure, reminiscent of focaccia bread, thick and luxurious.

Speaking of thick and luxurious, let’s get to the star of the show!

Unlike traditional stuffed crust, which merely crams cheese along the pie’s paltry perimeter, this ambitious new entry into the DiGiorno canon boasts, according to its box, “A FULL LAYER of cheese” on the inside. After some careful peeling (the pizza lent itself oddly well to being separated into layers), I can confirm that this is no joke! The inner cheese really does span the entire pizza, meting out an extra mound of mozzarella in every mouthful.

This is where my warning about the lack of crispiness comes in: often frozen pizzas are so brittle they snap if you look at them wrong, but the bonus layer of cheese makes this whole shebang seriously smooth and supple. I’d even go as far as to call it “fluffy.” That being said, the fluffiness is buried under an avalanche of sauce, toppings, and surprisingly soft crust, all jostling for your taste buds’ attention, so “extra cheesiness” does not necessarily jump out as part of the flavor profile. During my aforementioned peeling experiment, I was able to isolate the inner cheese and enjoy its buttery, slightly sharp taste — and the very comforting joyfulness that stuffed crust inevitably induces in me — but it was still a little bland.

If you particularly appreciate a silky texture or are just a passionate pizza patron, I would fully recommend this Fully Stuffed Crust. If your primary concern is taste, the extra cheese layer might not be stuffed with enough bang for your buck.

Purchased Price: $10.49
Size: 31.2 oz
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/6 pizza) 370 calories, 19 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 950 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of sugar, and 19 grams of protein.

DiGiorno’s pizza is my go-to dinner on nights when “Mommy is too busy to cook,” or sometimes, “Mommy has gone to a dark place.” So I’m quite familiar with the DiGiorno product line, specifically the DiGiorno croissant crust.

Now, at the request of no one, DiGiorno has decided that it needs to break into the breakfast market and create a sweet pizza. This is hardly unprecedented: Pizza Hut sells an Ultimate Chocolate Cookie that could claim the title of “Dessert Pizza,” plus you can find recipes for them on various food blogs. But this is an indulgent breakfast pizza! Does this really go with your morning coffee, or is it just weird?

It’s an attractive, if unusual, dish. The light dough-colored balls taste vaguely like cookie dough, and the dark swirls are pockets of cinnamon goodness. The rest of the pizza topping is made up of what I will call “sugary gunk,” a highly technical term used by professionals.

Okay, so I felt lazy leaving it at that and looked up what the sugary gunk is. According to DiGiorno’s website, the topping includes cinnamon cream sauce, cream cheese crumbles, and churro pieces. The cream cheese crumbles are likely those little bland pieces, in which case this component is really missing the tang of cheese. The churro pieces did not make much of an impression.

The pizza really does taste a lot like a cinnamon roll, though, and the fact that it’s a flat pizza means a much higher sugary-stuff-to-bread ratio, making it arguably better than most cinnamon rolls. I get this information from my husband, who hits the Cinnabon at every rest area on the highway, so he knows his stuff.

What doesn’t quite work here is the DiGiorno croissant crust. I would be happily eating my faux-cinnamon roll when I would get some of the crust in my mouth and suddenly be reminded of a sausage-laden Supreme Pizza, and it led to a weird feeling of disconnection with the product. The sweetness is strong enough that it’s not that noticeable for most of the pizza, but when you get to the end crust, it doesn’t seem to go with what you’re eating.

Now did I have this problem because the crust genuinely clashes with the flavor profile, or is it just because I have such strong associations with the DiGiorno crust? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure the crust is something DiGiorno can improve, at the very least. Another crust-related problem was the fact that the croissant crust did not fully expand in the oven; however, this may be because of how we cooked it. After nearly destroying my oven with one of these pizzas (to the point where my Dad had to come by with professional-grade tools to clean it), I wasn’t taking any more risks, and I put this thing on a tray in the oven, as God intended. So you probably will get a crispier, flakier crust if you follow the directions and put the pizza straight onto the rack. That is, assuming the pizza doesn’t bend while cooking, pour its tasty filling onto the bottom of the oven, and rapidly become carbonized sludge. If you want to attempt it, you’re braver than me.

When it’s not destroying kitchen equipment, the Croissant Cinnamon Roll Pizza is a largely successful breakfast outing for DiGiorno, and I recommend giving it a try. Just keep in mind there’s definitely room for improvement here.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 21.5 oz
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 460 calories, 20 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 60 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar (15 grams of added sugar), and 6 grams of protein.