My family loves making customized pizzas. Our favorite method is to make homemade pizza dough from scratch using the recipe on the back of the Aldi fast rising instant yeast packet. Then I add pizza sauce (often the Classico brand, but sometimes Trader Joe’s pizza sauce) and shredded mozzarella cheese, and I top half of the pizza with pepperoni.
To make dinner a little faster, we might resort to using a ready made crust kit, or we’ve tried different ready-to-bake pizza doughs from Aldi, including a refrigerated dough ball and a refrigerated tube of dough.
During a recent run to Trader Joe’s, which is a cousin to Aldi, I spotted their own refrigerated pizza dough and decided to give it a try.
Trader Giotto’s Ready to Bake Pizza Dough cost $1.69 for a 16-ounce package at the time of publication. That’s just 30 cents more than what I paid for ready to bake pizza dough at Aldi last summer, so this TJ’s dough seems to be competitively priced.
Ingredients include unbleached enriched flour, water, canola oil/extra virgin olive oil blend, sugar, salt, yeast, dough conditioner, and cultured wheat starch.
If you’re looking out for allergens, this contains wheat. It is vegan.
One package contains about eight servings. One serving (minus any pizza toppings you add) has 130 calories, 1.5 grams of total fat (2% DV), no saturated fat, 210 mg of sodium (9% DV), 25 grams of total carbohydrates (9% DV), and no added sugar.
Nutrition information, ingredients, and cooking directions. (Click to enlarge.)
The package states this dough is great for making breadsticks, rolls, and calzones, but it only has directions for making a traditional pizza.
The package has directions for cooking the pizza dough in a conventional oven or on a barbecue grill. Leave the dough at room temperature for 20 minutes. Remove the dough from the package. Flour your work surface liberally and roll dough into a 12-inch diameter circle. Top with your favorite pizza toppings.
If baking in the oven, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place the pizza on a lightly oiled pan or hot pizza stone and bake for 6-8 minutes or until cheese bubbles and the bottom of the crust is golden brown.
If grilling, place a pizza stone on the barbecue grill and preheat. Place the pizza on the pizza stone and cook on medium heat for 6-8 minutes or until the cheese bubbles and the bottom of the crust is golden brown.
Pizza after baking.
This dough can be a little on the sticky side when you take it out of the package, but it’s not too bad. I floured a baking mat and rolled out the dough until I got a somewhat circular shape that was a little more than 12 inches in diameter. When I transferred the rolled out dough to a greased baking sheet per the instructions, the dough shrank up a little, and I couldn’t keep it completely stretched out on the greased pan. My pizza ended up being about 12 inches in some spots and more like 10 or 11 inches in other spots. It still filled up most of the baking sheet.
I baked this for about 10 minutes rather than the 6-8 minutes the directions indicate. The crust baked up golden and a little puffy on the edges, and it had a nice slightly chewy texture on the edges.
Overall, this was a hit in my household and it’s similar to other ready to bake pizza dough I’ve used. I’d buy this again if I happened to be at Trader Joe’s and wanted semi-homemade pizza.
The Verdict:
Trader Giotto’s Ready to Bake Pizza Dough is sold in the refrigerated case and can be used to make pizza, calzones, breadsticks, or even rolls. TJ’s sells other pizza components separately, including sauce, cheese, and other toppings. Our pizza turned out great. If you enjoy making pizzas with custom toppings, this is worth picking up.
The similar Aldi crust, now at $1.29 is a much better buy. Avoid greasy pepperoni and use drained artichoke hearts and pitted black olives. Thinly sliced onions, especially red, pep up the taste.
The Aldi crust (I think it’s labelled Mama Cozzi’s) is very bland though.
I wonder if this stuff is the same.
I usually just make my own dough — if I use the bread machine it’s pretty quick..
got to try ? mama cozzi dough is great on the grill. for people with HBP always looking for low fat low sodium products
“A little sticky” she says… More like “crazy sticky” in my opinion. I have been making homemade pizzas for quite a long time now. I do not make my own crust. There are just so many options that are available that don’t warrant me making a mess of my kitchen. In the past I have always bought a frozen pizza dough that is made in Detroit. I just recently started purchasing the pizza dough from Trader Joe’s. Garlic & herb I believe. The first one I made a huge mistake on. I took the crust out of the refrigerator and put it into a small bowl with a piece of wax paper over it. This would allow it to rise for a few hours. This dough was so sticky the wax paper stuck to it and would not come off. Don’t make that same mistake. It is a good pizza once it’s baked up though.