Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Thin Crust Cheese Pizza

Thin Crust Cheese Pizza and Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza

It's a quixotic quest to be sure, trying to find a decent frozen microwaveable pizza. But we persist, because after all, our motto here at Dr. Gourmet is "We eat it, so you don't have to."™

Part of the problem is that microwaving just doesn't seem to work that well for pizza. All of the really good pizzas we've had have been baked in the oven - indeed, several of them specifically state, "microwave oven not recommended." There have been a few single-serving pizzas that we've found that are acceptable, of which only one is both microwaveable and single serving: a pizza from Lean Cuisine, of all people. And that's a deep-dish pizza, not a thin crust.

In any event, we keep trying on the off chance that we find something good. After all, if Lean Cuisine can make a decent pizza....

Our panel chose to review the Thin Crust Cheese Pizza first. Things did not start out well when we read the instructions, which refer to folding the lid of the carton over the back of the package - which has none of those things. What actually comes out of the box is a rectangular pizza on one of those silvery crisping trays in a shrink-wrapped plastic overwrap. There are no lids or other "trays" or anything like that.

Very well, we'll improvise. So we took the pizza out of the overwrap, left it on the silver crisping tray, placed both on top of the empty pizza box in the microwave, and cooked it for 2 minutes per the instructions (at least that part was clear). The good news is that the pizza smells like a pizza place - like tomato sauce and oregano. The bad news is that, as one panelist described it, "this is like pizza on Wasa bread."

Indeed. This is essentially a slightly chewy cracker with a little pizza sauce scraped over it and topped with a miserly amount of mozzarella cheese. Beware the label: it claims that there is "a blend of reduced fat cheeses" but there is only one cheese listed in the ingredients. Tsk, tsk, Weight Watchers. Nope, not pizza.

After that disappointment (although one must ask if it can be termed a disappointment when our expectations are so low), we turned to the Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza. The short version of the review is that this is basically the same pizza with 5 slices of pepperoni on it. The crust was a little crispier - that's all.

We won't even bother reporting on the numbers. You're better off making your pizza at home on a whole wheat pita.

Reviewed: May 16, 2014