Why You Should Rearrange Frozen Pizza Toppings Before Baking

Ah, the frozen pizza. Is there any better way to spend Friday night? Sure, it may not exactly be the wood-fired pizza with imported cheese and heirloom tomato sauce, but you'd be wrong in saying that it doesn't scratch that itch. Having first debuted in the fifties (via Invention and Tech), Americans have been stocking their freezers with boxes of frozen pizza, en masse, ever since — from the classic cheese pizza to ones with a cauliflower crust, the odds are high that you have one in your house, right now. In 2021, in fact, it seems that 6.06 billion dollars of frozen pizza were sold in the United States alone (via Statista), making for a pretty definitive example of the never-ending craving for pizza, no matter where it can be gotten.

But while frozen pizza is certainly popular and easy, it is sometimes ... not exactly perfect. If you are lucky, you may get a pizza with a generous amount of melted cheese with those golden brown bubbles, but other times, you will get one that seems like the machine broke down mid-production and they decided to just lazily toss all the cheese all over it by hand. You may get a pizza that has that perfect airy, yet temptingly crisp crust, or one that tastes like someone reheated wet cardboard and smeared cheap spaghetti sauce over it. You may even find that all those toppings are so scattered over the pizza that it's impossible to cut through it without making a mess or getting all those delicious toppings on one slice. 

Fortunately, there's a very easy solution to guarantee that every time you pop in a DiGiorno's, a Tony's, or a Tombstone pizza, you'll always be getting the best in every bite. 

On the Reddit forum "r/lifehacks", one user posted a recommendation to add an extra step to your frozen pizza reheating process. "Whenever cooking a frozen pizza", explains the user, "rearrange the ingredients before you cook it so that when you cut through it, it makes for a cleaner slice." Accompanying the post was an image of a frozen pepperoni pizza, the pepperonis arranged in such a way that each slice gets a fair amount of toppings — in other words, no pepperoni-less pizza and a clean straight slice. What more could a pizza lover ask for?

To some, this discovery was nothing short of a revelation, with some even sharing their own pizza hacks. One user suggested letting the pizza thaw, then brushing the crust down with a mixture of olive oil and garlic powder. 

"Better life hack:" said user Saljen. "Add your own pepperoni and shredded cheese to your frozen pizzas because not one of them has enough of either." Other users noticed that the original poster had moved a bit more pepperoni to one slice, with user milksteak11 pointing out that, "You just rearrange it so you get an extra pepperoni."

One user in particular didn't seem very impressed, noting "It's really not that hard to cut through pepperonis." The original poster, in good humor, simply responded with "It's true. It's also not very hard to rearrange the pepperonis so you have a neat little slice. You have the freedom to make frozen pizzas as you please, as do I my friend. God bless America."