Why You Should Thaw Your Frozen Pizza Before Baking It

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

When hunger strikes and you haven't come up with a plan for dinner, few foods beat the convenience of frozen pizza. Take it out of the box, toss the wrapper in the trash, and dinner is served roughly 20 minutes later. Still, while all frozen pizza brands from the grocery store give us more free time, the quality varies. They could often do with a little upgrade in the texture department, and one easy way to accomplish that bucks the conventional wisdom that dictates the pie should enter the oven in a frozen state.

Thawing a frozen pizza may sound like blasphemy to those who studiously follow the instructions on the box, but don't discount the notion before you try it. Think about it this way: does your favorite local pizza haunt cook its pies from frozen? Baking a thawed pizza more closely follows the technique professional pizza shops utilize, which involves cooking at extremely high temperatures that helps create that appetizing crispy crust. The key is to ignore the recommended temperature setting and crank the oven up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit, or however high your oven goes. It will bake quickly (typically in less than 10 minutes) so you need to keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn't burn. You'll also want to make sure you're using cookware that can handle the heat.

The reason most brands recommend that the product be cooked from frozen is due to safety concerns. As a it thaws, it has a higher chance of encountering bacterial growth. That is certainly something to bear in mind, but there are ways to minimize that risk.

If one were to set their favorite frozen pizza piled high with toppings on the counter to thaw, that could result in bacterial growth. Once food enters the danger zone (the USDA says that's between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit) for more than two hours, it can allow bacteria to thrive and multiply. So, it should go in the refrigerator. It typically takes hours for the pie to fully defrost in the fridge, but if food safety is a concern — and it should be — the safest way to thaw a frozen pizza is to plan ahead and put it in the refrigerator the night before.

Another dilemma with thawing frozen pizza is the moisture created when ice crystals melt into the dish. Depending on the thickness of the crust, that could result in the pizza even falling through the gaps in the oven rack while baking. The best way to counter this problem takes another page out of your local pizza joint's book and use a pre-heated pizza stone.

The Unicook Pizza Stone will do the trick for an affordable price. The pizza won't be able to make a mess on the bottom of your oven, and because a pizza stone cooks the pie from the bottom, the extra moisture created through thawing should dissipate. As for afterward, cleaning a pizza stone with baking soda takes a bit more time than simply tossing it in the dishwasher, but it is worth the extra effort for a frozen pizza that tastes more like it came from a restaurant.