I Tried And Ranked 9 Red Baron Frozen Pizzas, Worst To Best

To a pizza snob like me, frozen pizza is the equivalent of airline food. I won't go out of my way for it, nor will I look forward to eating it. But if I am absolutely being overtaken by hunger pangs and have no possible way of getting my hands on a tastier alternative, I'll cave and buy it.

What frozen pizza doesn't usually have in taste and texture it makes up for in convenience. Grab one of your favorite flavors, pop it on a sheet pan, and bake it until it's golden brown and crispy (or whatever the brand's definition of "golden brown and crispy" is). There is no shortage of frozen pizza brands to choose from at the grocery store, and one that dominates the freezer shelves at my local Walmart is Red Baron. The attractively packaged (I'll admit that I have a little crush on the Red Baron himself) pizzas come in an array of styles — including brick oven, thin and crispy, classic crust — and toppings. I wanted to see which of these pies from the frozen aisle baron himself were worth buying. So, I bought a smattering of pies across styles and flavors — foregoing my usual vegetarian eating habits for you, my dear reader — and prepared the pizzas according to the directions on the package before tasting and ranking them from worst to best based on factors like texture and flavor.

This is a pizza that I don't foresee myself (or anyone, for that matter) buying. I like Mexican food, but I think trying to throw those flavors on a pizza is too gimmicky. However, I was glad to see that Red Baron finally leaned into a flavor that it didn't otherwise offer in its lineup: spice.

This pie is topped with Mexican spicy sausage, spiced taco sauce (which I assume was added to the tomato sauce, seeing as there wasn't any drizzle visible on top of the pie), cheddar and mozzarella, and assorted veggies (namely bell peppers). When I first bit into the slice, I noticed there was a fun interplay between the spicier ingredients — which I don't really think are all that spicy or off-putting to a spice-averse eater — and the almost-sweet veggies.

Besides the strong international influence in this selection, the other thing that sets it apart from the other pies was its heaviness. While the other classic crust pies had a firm and slightly crispy crust, this one was almost soggy, likely due to how heavy the toppings were. Though the bottom was firm, the space between the sauce and the bottom was a little too doughy for my liking. Could the different sauce have something to do with it? Possibly, but regardless, this texture made it less enjoyable all around. In short, there weren't enough positive things about this pie to warrant buying it. You're better off buying tacos one day and pizza on another.

I tried not to repeat pizza toppings, but when there are simply so many pepperoni pizza styles that Red Baron makes, I knew I had to double up and feature more than one pepperoni. This brick oven pepperoni pizza has a slightly thicker crust than the thin and crispy pie — but not by much. When I flipped this brick oven pizza over, looked at the bottom, and compared it to the other classic crust pizzas, I noticed that it was a little more brown and sooty in appearance. If you were only looking at this pizza from the top angle, I doubt you would be able to find anything about it that's different from the classic crust pies.

The sooty flavor comes through in its taste as well. While the slight char (emphasis on slight) helped distract me from its frozen pizza crust flavor, it wasn't at the level that I would expect from my neighborhood brick oven pizza joint. Interestingly enough, I also thought the sauce was creamier and richer than the other pies — or maybe I just noticed it more here, seeing as there were very few slices of pepperoni to go around, and they were all concentrated in the center. If you took the time to move the slices around, this could be a better pepperoni pizza, but it's far from the best one that Red Baron offers.

When I first pulled this pie out of the oven, all I could think was "yeah, this looks like a frozen pizza." The cheese was stringy, yet gloopy, and didn't form a uniform coating across the entire pie. I could see the copious amounts of tomato sauce underneath, hidden just enough by the ample slices of pepperoni and sausage.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Red Baron's sausage, and I was glad to see that the brand littered this pie with more than enough of it. The meat is juicy and fresh, and if you told me it was never frozen, I would have believed you. However, I feel like this pizza would have been better with just sausage, more cheese, and less sauce. The pepperoni I could take or leave, as they don't play a crucial role in its flavor, and the classic crust wasn't anything special. As a whole, the pie lacked flavor and there wasn't anything memorable about it.

There are so many other Red Baron pizzas with far better textures than this one. The classic crust, across the board, was disappointing, and the only reason I placed it above the brick oven pepperoni is because of the juicy and flavorful sausage. Even if you like an all-meat pizza, this is not one that's worth buying.

I'm going to start with the negatives here: This four-meat pizza has all of the same issues as the lower-ranked sausage and pepperoni pizza. The only difference is that it has ham and ground meat on top of it in addition to the sausage and the pepperoni. The pie still looks like a frozen pizza: the cheese is scraggly and doesn't congeal into a blanket, and there is too much sauce. The sauce itself tastes like a store-bought pizza sauce — too sweet and lacking those punchy aromatics and balancing vinegar notes. When you compound it with a lackluster crust that tastes doughy, sad, and flavorless, you get a pretty subpar pie.

The ground meat, I found, was not that much different from the sausage. Once I had a bite of the whole slice, I picked at the meat nuggets to see whether I could tell if they were ground beef or sausage — it was probably more difficult a task than ranking all of the pizzas on this list, if I'm being honest. The ground meat was unseasoned and lacked body, and its slightly less juicy texture is the only way I could separate it from the sausage. The pepperoni was spread across the entire pie, but it wasn't really taking center stage as far as flavors go.

Ultimately, I placed the four-meat pie above the sausage and pepperoni one is because the ham added a slightly smoky flavor. I would have preferred bacon instead of it, though — and Red Baron should nix the ground beef entirely.

I'm going to be honest with you right off the bat: I really don't like pepperoni pizza. Even when I was eating a more meat-centric diet, I never really liked how the flavor of the pepperoni tainted every bite and how the spiciness of the meat itself was so unpredictable. Luckily, Red Baron's pepperoni is as inoffensive as inoffensive gets, and it really doesn't offer any punchy flavors to elevate the pie.

The base of this thin and crispy pizza (err... fancy cracker with tomato sauce) didn't wow me, either. The pepperoni was all concentrated in the center of the pie, leading me to believe that the Red Baron needs to forego his flight lessons and instead take pizza-making lessons from his local pizzeria.

Thin and crispy crust is also just not as satisfying as regular, thick crust — regardless of whether it's the base of a frozen pie or a fresh slice. However, because there was less of the crust, I didn't notice that its flavor was as lackluster as I did with the brick oven pepperoni. The crust was, as the brand promised, crispy and crunchy, shattering with every bite I took of this pizza. The tomato sauce was bland, and the cheese was just enough to get by. That being said, it's not a pie I'm going to write home about, nor buy again from the frozen aisle of the grocery store. Chicagoans may appreciate this frozen rendition of tavern-style pizza, but it's not my favorite here.

The supreme pizza is about as classic as it gets; it's topped with peppers (both green and red), onions, pepperoni, and sausage. The brand is better about distributing the toppings on this pizza than some of its others, and I was grateful to see that there was a colorful array of green and red veggies on the slice I cut. However, I was missing the onions, both in terms of taste and appearance. They can be a divisive topping on pizza because of their sharpness, but I wish that there were more of them to live out the promise of them on the label. When I did try an onion sans pizza, I couldn't help but notice how watery and soft it was. It lacked any punchy flavor, which I can attribute to the freezing.

There wasn't a ton of cheese on this pizza, though I didn't mind it. There was enough excitement going on as far as the toppings, which, for the most part, were well distributed — meaning that every bite had a good ratio of them. My favorite part of the pie was definitely the sausage (it might have been the pepperoni, but by this point in the ranking, I had eaten so many pepperoni pizzas that I was admittedly overwhelmed). The meat was juicy, soft, and flavorful, and it really elevated the bite as a whole. I just wish there had been more sausage pieces (and onions).

I hereby name this pizza the kitchen sink of frozen pizzas. Seriously, this pie has absolutely everything you could ever want on a frozen pizza: onions, green peppers, black olives, pepperoni, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, sausage — you name it, this pizza has it. I was thankful that it didn't add any ground beef to this pie, as it would have distracted from the ample serving of sausage littering the pie. The meat flavored the vegetables quite well, and I found that this pizza tasted more strongly of pepperoni than the pepperoni combo pies (including the pepperoni and sausage and the original supreme).

The number of toppings on this pie — and the fact that they covered every inch of the pie, all the way to the edge — didn't just do good things for the visual appeal of the pie. The blanket of toppings also hid the fact that Red Baron seriously shortchanged me on the cheese. The sauce — you know, the cheap, overly sugary one that affixes all of its classic crust pies — wasn't as in the spotlight as it was with other pies, earning it a slightly higher spot on this ranking. Since there was a lot going on, I was also not able to point out the shortcomings with some of the toppings, namely the overly watery onions. There was just enough topping in every bite, too; I hate olives, but I didn't mind them on this pizza because there were so many other flavors present and intermingling.

I'll admit, cheese-stuffed crust and I go way back. When I was in middle school, I ate copious amounts of cheese calzones, cheesy garlic breads, and anything you could think of that combined cheese and bread together. But now, this cheese-stuffed four-cheese pizza from Red Baron just tastes like something I would feed to a small child to pacify them. The sauce is virtually undetectable under a layer of mozzarella, cheddar, Parmesan, and Asiago. Parmesan and Asiago are dry cheeses, so I didn't really taste them, but I did note that the weight of the cheese was quite heavy, especially for a frozen pizza. Red Baron was apparently quite stingy with its cheeses on its other pizzas, but it clearly didn't skimp on this one.

Besides the cheese on the pizza, there was also a hearty band of cheese around the edges. Now, this wasn't the sunken-in cheese of a bad frozen mozzarella stick. Instead, it filled the entire edge and imparted a rich mouthfeel to the last couple of bites. However, the cheese wasn't at all flavorful or well-salted, so it didn't really do much for the flavor of the slice besides making it fattier and denser.

If I were a small, picky-eater child, I would probably wax poetic about this pizza. But as an adult, I wished for something much more herby, flavorful, or otherwise noteworthy. That said, I ranked it higher than the special deluxe pie (and others) because its basic-ness means you can add your own toppings and customize it to your liking.

It seems that the Fully Loaded and hand-tossed ultimate pepperoni pizza was the remedy to all of my pepperoni-related qualms. This was the only pepperoni pizza that had its toppings well spread out across the pie and also featured smaller, chopped pieces of pepperoni, meaning there was a little bit in every bite. I also noticed long pieces of orange-colored cheese, which, after looking at the box, I identified as cheddar. I have my reservations about putting cheddar cheese on a pizza, but even I can admit that this was a good pie — at least by frozen pizza standards.

Compared to the other slices I sampled, this one was positively loaded with toppings. The cheese melted off the pie and the small bites and ample slices of pepperoni worked together to deliver a wholesome, tasty bite. Although the crust was not very flavorful (it is frozen pizza, lest we forget) and there is a lot of it, the only part that was really frozen pizza-esque about it was the bottom, which was a little dry.

This was easily the best pepperoni pizza of the lot and the tastiest one I tried for this review. It had enough pepperoni flavor to appease a fan of the cured meat, but not so much that I tasted pepperoni for hours after I finished the slice. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I saved the rest of this pizza for later, which was not the case for most of the pies on this list.

Most of these pizzas (with the exception of the Fully Loaded hand-tossed-style crust) had instructions for baking them on a tray or straight on the oven rack. For consistency's sake, I decided to bake each pizza on a sheet pan from frozen with a layer of parchment paper to prevent sticking.

Once the pizzas were baked according to the package instructions, I cut off a piece using a pizza wheel and tasted it. Since the pizzas, for the most part, baked up the same and all had the same simple instructions, the primary factors for ranking these pizzas were topping quality, taste, and texture. Not only did the highest-ranked pizzas have all of the toppings listed on the box, but those toppings all added to the overall experience of the slice. The toppings should also be well-distributed so that every bite has a little bit of every one. Moreover, the crust shouldn't taste "frozen" or lack flavor; rather it should act as a solid and flavorful base for the toppings and sauce.

I tried to sample an array of pizzas in different crust styles and with different toppings, and there's something for everyone on this list. That being said (and putting my pepperoni pizza reservations aside), I definitely think that Red Baron's Fully Loaded hand-tossed-style crust with pepperoni is deserving of a spot in everyone's freezer thanks to its quality crust, ample toppings, and overall balanced bite.