In praise of frozen pizza

I've pretty much always enjoyed frozen pizza, but it used to be that the frozen stuff was pretty obviously of inferior stature. I mean, we're talking Chef Boyardee canned ravioli versus fresh ravioli cooked in quality sauce, in terms of quality comparison. A frozen pizza was a "good quick meal", but it wasn't really an alternative if one was really, truly in the mood for pizza, you know? (Unless, of course, it was late at night in college and we were at least buzzed on beer.)

But these days, frozen pizzas have become a lot more sophisticated and a lot closer to what you'd find at a pizza place. Sure, it's still the equivalent of a run-of-the-mill pizza place, the kind of joint that is open until three in the morning in college towns and sells a large cheese-and-pepperoni for six bucks, but that's still a huge advance in quality. You get crust that actually rises in the oven and doesn't taste like crispy cardboard (even if it still does not have that bread-like taste or crunch of genuine oil-brushed fresh pizza dough). Cheese that actually melts, as opposed to simply "crisping" in that weird shredded state it was in to begin with.

The current crop of "higher end" frozen pizzas aren't as good as the quality local places, or the better chains like Pizzeria Uno, but they're getting pretty damned good these days. (Just make sure you follow the baking directions. Just sticking the thing in a preheated oven and taking it out before it burns really doesn't work anymore; if you actually do what it says on the box, the product actually comes out pretty nicely.)