DiGiorno Vs Red Baron: Who Has The Best Frozen Pizza?

If you claim to be a pizza fan but you don't have your freezer stuffed full of frozen pies to heat and eat on the spur of the moment, do you even know how to pizza? There should be at least a couple boxes from the best frozen pizza providers in your stash at all times, replenished as soon as you've eaten the last one. And if the brands you're eyeing are DiGiorno or Red Baron, you could use a little information about which one is at the top of the frozen food chain.

Putting these frozen pizza pioneers side by side is the best way to determine which is the better way to spend your pizza budget. Rather than letting you fumble into the frozen pizza aisle and feel your way through, I set up a simple culinary comparison to find out if DiGiorno is as delicious as delivery like the commercials say or if Red Baron is the only way to fly when it comes to the frozen pizza game. Sometimes, you just have to fire up the oven, taste a slice of each brand, and find out firsthand which frozen pizza is worth your hard-earned cash. Oh, the trouble I go to for the sake of culinary curiosity.

Following suit like the finest of pizzerias, both DiGiorno and Red Baron give pizza dough added dimension with a variety of thicknesses and textures. DiGiorno has come up with a whopping 11 different ways to dazzle with dough, including but not limited to stuffed crust, rising dough, and square-style deep dish. It's like having a custom pizza maker waiting in the freezer to take your order and hand you your favorite dough. Check the arctic aisles of your grocer, and you'll find DiGiorno pies featuring crusts in Thin, Rising, Classic, Detroit, Hand-Tossed, Gluten Free, Stuffed, Fully Stuffed, Thin & Crispy Stuffed, and Loaded Ultra-Thin styles. There's even a dastardly bonus style cropping up among the boxes, the super-fancy Croissant crust, providing flaky layers instead of the usual chewy dough format.

Though Red Baron does its best to keep up, offering a septet of enticements in the forms of Classic, Brick Oven, Fully Loaded, French Bread, Thin & Crispy, and Stuffed Crust, it's not as extensive of an approach as DiGiorno takes. Still, every option is a familiar favorite that gives shoppers a chance to stock their freezers with possibilities to please everyone at the table.

Crust type is a tough call, which is why this category ends in a tie. Nicely done by both brands.

Since just about anything can qualify as pizza toppings these days, it should be a toss-up between these two brands depending on personal taste. But reviewing the selections in the freezer section requires a bit of notetaking to keep up with Red Baron. With at least a dozen different toppings on its pizzas, the barnstorming brand does an admirable job combining meat, veggies, extra cheese, and unexpected elements like Mexican pizza with taco sauce and sausage, barbecue chicken, and a bacon lover's collection with traditional and Canadian bacon to dress up the sauce and cheese. 

DiGiorno isn't slacking in the toppings department, yet somehow it comes up with less than half of what Red Baron flies by with. Despite special releases of flavors like mac and cheese pizza, a tidy seven toppings includes favorites like pepperoni and sausage along with novelties like bacon and Hawaiian-style pineapple and ham. When mixed in different combinations with DiGiorno's greater variety of crusts, it makes for a larger all-around array of pizzas to go for. But with toppings topping the expectation list of so many frozen pizza fans, it's a "more is more" situation that DiGiorno doesn't address as well as the box with the guy wearing the scarf and goggles.

Points for better toppings go to Red Baron.

In reality, there's no such thing as a wrong size for pizza. Rustic handmade pies in personal sizes are every bit as delicious as larger masterpieces. But manufacturing demands uniformity, which means largely getting the usual circular pie in a square box when frozen pizza enters the picture. To tip the pie game on its ear, both DiGiorno and Red Baron take the trouble to provide a little variety in the size arena, giving pizza lovers that thing everyone loves when it comes to getting what they want out of their dinner: choice.

For DiGiorno, pizza exists in two different sizes: classic and personal. While this isn't terribly far from how your favorite restaurant serves up its sliceable circles, Red Baron goes one better with a French bread offering that turns the rounded classic into an elongated rectangle. There's no rough-edged rustic strangeness masquerading as artisan pie, although in some locations the fabled DiGiorno calzone can be found. Otherwise, these two providers bring pizza to the table in as straightforward a shape as possible.

It's a toss-up between DiGiorno and Red Baron where pizza size is on the scoreboard.

When you're hangry for frozen pizza and you're counting down the minutes to go time, you want the timer to run as quickly as possible. Unless you're willing to chaw on an icy pie, you'll need to give the oven at least 15 or so minutes to do its magical work, depending on the size and style of pizza you prefer. Does DiGiorno take more consideration than Red Baron, knowing that every minute longer in the oven is a minute of enjoyment delayed? Or does Red Baron outdo DiGiorno by engineering pies that can cook up quicker and hit the table in short order?

For a DiGiorno pie, you'll be watching the oven for a not-terrible 21 to 24 minutes, depending on how your appliances work and how brown you like your crust. With Red Baron, it's a slightly quicker 18 to 21 minutes, which will get you eating a full six minutes quicker if you're good with blonde crust and cheese that's just melted rather than gooey and bubbly. Both require 400 degrees Fahrenheit to get the cooking underway, which means the respective crusts are the likely cause of the timing difference. Either way, you get your pizza in less time than it takes for your delivery hut to cook and carry your pies to your door.

If you're in a huge hurry, Red Baron is the speedy selection; if you prefer a better-baked pie, DiGiorno should be your pie of preference.

Unless you plan on downing the whole pie yourself, it's crucial to get a sense of how many people you should invite to your pizza party and how many pies you'll need to pick up. Though both DiGiorno and Red Baron offer circular pizzas that can be sliced into as many slivers as you see fit, as well as some square-tangular versions that can be sheared into appetizer-sized strips, understanding what a serving equates to with both brands can help you divvy up the deliciousness while tracking nutrition.

A round DiGiorno pizza labels a serving as one-fifth of a pie, which is a sensible portion and slice size. A similar Red Baron pizza makes those slices larger by calling a serving one-quarter of a pie, providing portions that are a bit more generous. Anyone who's dealt with the temptation of divvying up an at-home pizza knows that hunger dictates slice size and serving quantity. The manufacturers' suggestions align with nutrition facts for their designated servings, an important aspect to consider if you're paying attention to your dietary requirements.

Where servings per pie are concerned, DiGiorno offers more servings, while Red Baron provides larger servings.

You may not pull your frozen pizza out of the oven expecting a nutritious meal, which is fair. But among the many facts about frozen pizza is the knowledge that it's more of a comfort food dinner, an occasional indulgence that won't put too many dings in your healthful efforts as long as you enjoy it in moderation. But knowing what you're getting yourself into with both DiGiorno and Red Baron can help you make a decision that may outweigh the flavor factor in favor of enjoyment with less anxiety over your intake of calories, fat, and sodium.

Per the listing on the box, one serving of DiGiorno four-cheese pizza (139 grams) carries 320 calories, 11 grams of fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, and 720 milligrams of sodium. A slightly smaller serving (126 grams) of Red Baron three-cheese pizza brings in a similar 320 calories, though the fat rings up at 14 grams, the cholesterol at 30 milligrams, and sodium at 710 milligrams. The two are close enough to make the decision a challenge. Of course, nutrition numbers will vary depending on how large you make your slices. These figures give you a baseline for what you'll be getting if you stray from the suggested serving sizes.

For nutrition, DiGiorno and Red Baron are neck and neck.

No matter what style of pie you favor, if the ingredient quality is subpar, your experience is going to suffer. Plenty of frozen pizza brands offer high-quality ingredients. And though both DiGiorno and Red Baron offer moderately priced packages to satisfy your pizza cravings, there should be a level of expectation for high-quality pizza ingredients that translates into fantastic flavor and top-notch texture from crust to toppings, especially if you end up paying premium prices for in-home pie dining.

Digging into DiGiorno's website makes it easy to survey the selection of ingredients, a simpler process than shuffling through the boxes while holding the freezer door open at the grocery store. Boasting 100% real cheese right on the website is an eye-catcher for anyone wondering if strange one-off cheese replacements might be present. But if you crack open the ingredient list on a Meat Lovers pie, you'll find a volume of odd elements like "cooked pizza topping mix," which appears to be pork, chicken, beef, and soy mashed together in what is presumably "ground meat-like topping" that includes "natural grill flavor." Um ... wow. Fly by Red Baron's website to peruse the company's Meat Lovers pie, and you'll find a similar read-out with slightly different verbiage such as "cooked beef patty topping" and "textured vegetable protein," plus a whole lot of additives, nitrates, and dough conditioners that are maybe better left a mystery.

In the ingredient quality category, both DiGiorno and Red Baron seem to use equally questionable stuff.

Maybe you see frozen pizza as a way to minimize your dining expenses while enjoying one of your favorite go-to dishes. Rising grocery costs may have kneecapped that philosophy, with delivery and eat-in outlets are doing their best to compete through promotional prices and special menu offerings. But pizza is one of those frozen food items no one seems to stop eating, no matter which way the financial climate turns. Both DiGiorno and Red Baron come up with prices that make it easy to toss a pie-in-a-box into your cart while shopping for groceries, but you might have second thoughts when you see what you'll be paying for that kind of convenience.

The suite of DiGiorno pizzas appears at prices ranging from $6.99 for smaller and simpler options to $10.99 for grander, more gregarious pies. Red Baron keeps its selections slightly more affordable with prices between $4.79 and $12.59 for multipacks, though the amounts will obviously vary depending on your shopping location. Anyone who knows how to top their own Italian delight with fresh meats and veggies can save money by opting for the cheaper cheese pizza. If you're going for a more premium array for a special occasion, DiGiorno's pizzeria-style pies with features like stuffed crust and specialty toppings might justify the higher prices as it jockeys for the crown of best frozen pizza brand in one Mashed survey.

Taking price into consideration, Red Baron puts pizza in your freezer for less money than DiGiorno.

To keep the playing field as level as possible, I opted for simple multi-cheese pies, which in the DiGiorno world ended up as a rising crust four-cheese pie and in the Red Baron pizza-verse turned out to be classic crust three-cheese pie. Though both pizzas baked up to expectation, even matching the photos on the boxes, the finished DiGiorno pie edged out Red Baron for appetizing appearance. I'm a sucker for thicker crust and swirls of cheese, and DiGiorno — ahem — delivers better than the Red Baron.

When it came down to flavor, a single bite of each revealed the authenticity and freshness of the sauce, cheeses, and crust from each brand. Though Red Baron's cheese had excellent meltability, the crust was a bit cardboard-like and the sauce had a slight chemical essence that was less than delicious. By contrast, DiGiorno's crust was just thick enough at the center to be chewy, with a pillowy border all the way around. DiGiorno has mastered the sauce game as well, with a robust, tomato-rich spread that provides a mellow base for cheese that melted smoothly and softly. Every bite was a reminder of how close frozen pizza can come to replicating a fresh-baked pizza experience.

As far as taste and enjoyment go, DiGiorno is delicious, while Red Baron is just passable.

There's a reason DiGiorno compares itself to delivery-style pizza; the quality of the pie from top to bottom replicates an authentic dial-up experience you can create at home. From the array of crusts that push the borders without going over the top to a range of toppings that aims to satisfy without confusing customers to a finished product that feels and tastes more like a fresh-baked pizza, the company performs admirably. If the occasion calls for pizza from the freezer, DiGiorno is the one I'd opt for over Red Baron every time. Red Baron does its best, but it just doesn't fly as high into the realm of frozen pizza enjoyment as DiGiorno does. There's a cheapness that can't be overcome by the mere promise of easy-to-bake frozen pizza.

If you're looking to load up your deep freeze with fine pizza picks for future dining moments, consider saving up a little or looking for specials at your favorite grocery store to get a diverse DiGiorno collection and leave Red Baron in the hangar. You'll have some of the coolest frozen pies on hand for the occasion when pizza is calling your name but you're too homebound to head out to the parlor or too cash-strapped to call for delivery.

As you might imagine, no matter how DiGiorno and Red Baron pizzas stack up against one another, having the chance to taste two different pizzas makes the true determination of the winner. My presumption was that if I can enjoy one a basic cheese pizza from DiGiorno or Red Baron, anything extra added to the formula is going to make the party even tastier. While it's easy to pick off the toppings you don't like to get back to basics, building up a better pizza by starting with an inferior crust-sauce-cheese combination bearing a pile of toppings is a slick switcheroo any pizza lover will see right through.

Rather than taking a bite of each to make the comparison, I let myself experience the entire slice to get a better sense of how repeated tasting might flesh out a fuller profile. I did a palate cleansing (okay ... I downed a glass of water) between slices to be sure I wasn't mixing and matching. I also gave both pizzas plenty of cooling time to avoid that irritating roof-of-the-mouth scorch that can affect enjoyment after the first slice does the damage. Though it was tempting to go further, I stuck to my single-slice limit for each, which means I have tons of leftovers to work through. Not a bad situation to be in.