The Frozen Pizza Chronicles - Tombstone Original 12" Supreme Pizza

Ahoy, welcome to the first post in an ongoing series entitled "The Frozen Pizza Chronicles." This is where we will address the ever-expanding community of frozen pizza lovers with in-depth reviews of that staple of the frozen-food isle. Although frozen pizza mostly sucks when compared to the real stuff, it is an important part of the diet of many people due to its extreme convenience and friendliness to the wallet. On to the review!

Tombstone pizza is a staple nationwide brand distributed by the Kraft corporation. Their pizzas are extremely budget-minded, definitely no "luxury pizzas" here. The pizza I ate this evening was on special at the Canton Safeway for $3 a piece (not 2 for $6 as the Safeway special jargon wishes you to believe). It was available in three flavors of "Original" style (Pepperoni, Supreme, and Extra Cheese) though a quick check on the Kraft website reveals almost 40 DIFFERENT VARIETIES of Tombstone pizza including a Supreme Taco Pizza!

Ingredients list is about as expected; The sausage is constructed from pork, "mechanically separated chicken," and TVP. Also, some quick math shows that a whole pizza (I ate the whole thing for a satisfying dinner) contains about 70 grams of fat! That is a lot of fuel for a cold winter night (but not quite as much as a Triple Whopper).

I cooked this pizza on 400F for 20 minutes as recommended, then another five minutes to get the recommended "golden brown" on the edges. My roommate Matt Brown gave me a Tombstone insider tip: Wait for the pizza's edges to start curling up towards the center...that's how you know it's done!

The pizza is aesthetically appealing and has a nice random scatter pattern to the toppings. It looks tasty and smells strongly of the sauce so prevalent in its flavor. The extra cooking time gave the crust an extreme brittleness and crunch. Right out of the oven, the pizza's crunch appealing but became a bit of a problem. After finishing the pizza, the roof of my mouth was slightly traumatized. It was not terrible but is definitely the pizza's major flaw. 

From experience, I know that less cooking time would have resulted in a weird moistness to the top part of the crust. I don't see any solution to the brittleness problem.

The tombstone supreme pizza has a good overall balance between the amount of sauce, cheese, and toppings. The flavor of the toppings is appropriate for this price range, pepperoni and sausage performed fine, but the veggies (onion, green and red bell pepper) should be sliced thicker to get more flavor. The sauce could use less salt.

THE GOODS

ECONOMY - 9/10 A 22.9 oz pizza for $3 is 13 cents per oz! Super cheap.

CRUST - 4/10 Poor, far too brittle when cooked to completion. Flavorless, but cooked uniformly.

TOPPPINGS - 6/10 Nice balance between sauce, toppings and cheese. Enough meat, but needed more veggies.

FLAVOR - 7/10 Decent flavor, not too greasy, ingredients fuse well but overly salty.

OVERALL SATISFACTION - 7/10 Good for the money. Nothing to write home about, but not bad either.

Comments welcome! Let us know how you feel about this pizza and what you think of the rating system. Also, anyone interested in reviewing a frozen pizza please send us an email and we'll work it on out. -AK