[product review] chef anthony russo’s gluten free pizzas

You know I don’t do the gluten-free thing, but I like trying new things. I was given the opportunity to try our Chef Anthony Russo’s new line of all natural gluten-free pizzas. These are frozen pizzas bringing another product to the market for a gluten-free product.

I haven’t always had the best of luck trying gluten-free products so I was maybe a little wary about this one. But adventurous about it in any case!

Chef Russo has a few flavors out for his gluten-free pizza. This is the Margherita with roma tomatoes, basil, olive oil and mozzarella cheese (no tomato sauce here, folks).

There are six different varieties in Chef Russo’s line of gluten-free pizzas, including the above mentioned Margherita, Cheese, Uncured Pepperoni, Mulberry (a combo of Italian sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, & crumbled hamburger), Chicken Rustica and Greek.

The gluten-free crust uses rice flour, potato starch and tapioca flour to replace the traditional bread or regular flour normally used in pizza crust.

Here’s what the Margherita looks like right out of the box. Since I made this for breakfast one morning, I removed the frozen tomatoes and added a few of my own ingredients to doctor this baby up. I’d really do this for any kind of frozen pizza I encountered – I like adjusting things to my own liking.

I ended up adding: fresh ricotta cheese, crumbled bacon, Parmesan cheese, mushrooms, garlic, fresh chives and an egg on top.

This was sort of like a base cheese pizza, minus the tomato sauce. For a frozen pizza, it was quite good – and for a frozen gluten free pizza – even better! I actually really liked this pizza, surprising even myself. The crust still maintained a nice, crisp crunch to it, though nothing like regular pizza. It didn’t really puff up and was more “cracker” like since it was flat and thin. But this didn’t take away from the crust, it still had a good flavor and a nice bite to it.

The other pizza I used that same morning was the plain cheese – again, spicing it up for a little more “oomph” and flavor.

Same fixings as the last pizza, but with tomato sauce in the mix as well. The sauce was slightly sweet and a nice base for the pizza. I couldn’t decide between the two which I liked better – for breakfast pizza, I think I’d lean slightly more towards the non-tomato sauce version.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the nice taste and crunch from these gluten-free pizzas. I don’t buy frozen pizza very often but I might even say I’d be tempted to pick one of these up over the other brands floating around in the store these days.

Chef Russo’s pizzas are currently not available in Southern California, but he is planning on moving his production and pizzas into our area soon – so hopefully you’ll be able to try his pizza’s for yourself very soon!

* Disclaimer – I received complimentary boxes of Chef Russo’s gluten free pizza for review. I was not paid for this review and all opinions listed here are my own.