10 Whole Foods Frozen Pizzas To Buy And 2 To Skip

Whole Foods has made a name for itself as the place for health-conscious people to shop. Organic meats, a wide selection of gluten and dairy-free substitutions, and healthy snacks are the name of the chain's game. While all of these ingredients are fine and good, sometimes even the whole-foods enthusiast just needs a quick and easy meal.

Enter, Whole Foods frozen pizzas. The chain has two brands — 365 and Whole Foods Market — of its own curated selection of quick-baking, attractively packaged pizzas. In true Whole Foods fashion, many of the pies are made with unbleached wheat flour, and others provide vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options so you don't have to feel guilty about opting for a ready-made meal.

There's a lot of variety in topping choices, so next time you're shopping for Whole Foods products and find yourself lacking the energy to cook once you get home, use this guide to know which pizzas to buy and which to skip.

The supreme 365 pizza is thin-crusted and loaded with omnivore-friendly toppings like Canadian bacon, sausage, olives, onions, peppers, and pepperoni. It's the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink of pizzas, and perfect if you're more interested in good toppings than sauce and crust. Also worth noting is the price — at $5.29 a box, it's the same price as most of the other 365 brand pizzas that come with a lot less loaded on top of them, like cheese and pepperoni. Thus, more bang for your buck.

The overall flavor was about what you'd expect of a frozen pizza. It's not anything we haven't seen before, and not necessarily something I would seek out specifically from Whole Foods, but it still delivered. I would recommend the supreme to the protein lover who craves three different meats and a few veggies with their crust.

This inviting green pizza smelled aromatic and fresh coming out of the oven. Soft chunks of zucchini, leaves of rapini (also called broccoli rabe), garlic, and a bright basil pesto sauce make for an enticing combination.

If you haven't had rapini before, picture a more spindly version of broccoli with long leaves surrounding a few florets. The stalk is perfectly edible, and the leaves have a bit of mustard spice to them, which makes sense given that rapini comes from the Brassicaceae or mustard family. 

Used in this pizza, the combination of greens is fantastic. With a sprinkling of cheese and that delightfully fluffy crust, you don't even notice you're eating a bunch of vegetables. The whole thing works cohesively, and eating this pizza will make you feel like you've just purchased a pie from a restaurant rather than heating it from frozen in your own oven. I will be buying this one again and again.

I have to admit, at first, I was judging the book by its cover with this one. How good could a vegan pizza be? Turns out — not too shabby. The interesting thing about this pizza is that it reminds me of chips and dip. The crust is thin and crunchy, while the flavor of the vegan cheese, olives, mushrooms, and peppers reminds me of a bean and cheese dip. It has a surprisingly bold flavor that makes your mouth water.

My one complaint with this pizza is the crust, though. While it almost works with the idea of bean dip in mind, it's just too crunchy for pizza crust. Plus, pizza dough is naturally vegan (most of the time), being made with just flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast, and olive oil. The tricky part with vegan pizza is really the cheese. Were they to take the toppings from this pizza and put them on that wood-fired crust, then we'd really be cooking.

I may prefer a floppy rather than crispy crust, but the taste of the toppings still made the vegan ultimate veggie a worthwhile buy. While I would say the average carnivore might not be a super fan, this pizza isn't bad for the non-vegan either. 

The wood-fired series of Whole Foods Market pizzas were some of my absolute favorites. The crusts are fluffy with that thick, Neapolitan-style ring that's great out of the box if you're too intimidated to order in a Neapolitan-style pizzeria. They are a few dollars more than the 365 thin-crust pizzas, but I think it's well worth the extra cost.

The pesto burrata wood-fired crust is coated with a burrata sauce that is deliciously smooth and creamy, just like the inside of a ball of burrata. Sweet cherry tomatoes punctuate the surface along with fresh basil leaves. To top it all off, you're provided with a packet of green pesto sauce to drizzle over the top once the pie has finished baking. It's all the fresh, bright flavors you would hope for, given the name, and it didn't disappoint in the slightest.

I really didn't expect to like the gluten-free four cheese pizza more than the original, but that was, in fact, the case. The crust (believe it or not) was the main difference, although I was intrigued to see that the four cheeses used here are different as well, this one being topped with low-moisture mozzarella, Asiago, Parmesan, and Romano.

The dough is made with oat and rice flours, and the crust — even though it's gluten-free — has a nice toasted flavor. It also has a surprisingly bouncy bite, which sets it apart from the crispness of the non-gluten-free option. The sauce appears to be the same orange-hued, semi-bland marinara, so perhaps it's the difference in cheeses that aids with the flavor as well. Whatever the case, the gluten-free four cheese tasted surprisingly good, and I would buy it again.

As soon as I popped the oven door on the 365 pepperoni pizza, I was greeted with the smell of hot pepperoni — a spicy, greasy smell that made me feel like I was walking into a New York pizza shop. Perhaps it's the oils of the pepperoni that have soaked into the crust and made it softer and more flavorful, but this one just tasted leaps and bounds better than the plain cheese. There's a little more bounce to the bite, and it tastes like crust should (rather than like cardboard).

It's no wonder that pepperoni is America's favorite pizza topping — one ingredient really transforms the pizza from basic to mouth-watering. I would definitely buy the uncured pepperoni pizza from Whole Foods again, for myself or for a group setting. It's an easy people pleaser, has a great flavor, and all the ingredients work well together.

Of the 365 brand pizzas, the chicken and BBQ sauce was one of my favorites. As soon as I opened the oven door, the fragrant smell of sweet barbecue sauce wafted into the air and made my mouth water. It's used both as a sauce over the crust and as a marinade for the chicken pieces, making the barbecue flavor abundant.

The smoked Gouda mixed with mozzarella really stands out on the barbecued background and adds even more grill-reminiscent flavor. Purple onions bring a little pep to the whole ordeal, and there's a sprinkling of chopped herbs for garnish that stays impressively colorful throughout the baking process.

This isn't a true Italian, gourmet, or innovatively flavored pizza, but it hits the nail on the head in execution. The flavors all work well together, the meat is seasoned nicely, and I would find myself craving it next time I'm looking for a quick dinner.

Like the other wood-fired pizzas, the mushroom and truffle did not disappoint. The crust is delightfully textured with pockmarks of char from the fire. I will say that on first pulling this one out of the oven, the truffle and garlic sauce pools a bit unattractively in the center of the pizza, but if you give it a few minutes to rest, they absorb into the cheese and crust, making for a flavor explosion.

Flavor-wise, it isn't too heavy on the truffle. The creminis and portobellos are the predominant flavor and texture, which is perfect for the mushroom-lover. The garlic is complementary but not very strong (either a pro or a con depending on who you're talking to), and the juiciness of the sauces and cheese make for one delectable pie. I will be rushing to buy this one again.

The Mediterranean 365 pizza was my absolute favorite of the thin-crusted collection. While I was a bit disappointed with all of the crusts of the 365-brand pies, the Mediterranean toppings on this one brought enough punch to distract from the crust and make the whole pizza more enjoyable.

There's both mozzarella and feta cheese, and I love that the mozzarella melts in a nice layer over the whole pie while the feta stays in its cube shape and brings bites of tartness. Spinach, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes seal the deal. The sun-dried tomatoes are my favorite ingredient, being chopped fine and spread evenly so each bite gets a little bit of that sweet acidity.

Whether you're vegetarian or not, the absence of meat won't be noticed with how enjoyable these flavors are. All the ingredients work well together and keep you coming back for bite after bite.

Where the four cheese pizza fell short in flavor, the Italian cheeseboard succeeds. From the crust to the sauce to the cheese, this one is everything you long for in a cheese-centric pizza — and a little more. 

They promised creamy on the front of the box, and boy, did they deliver. A five-cheese blend of mozzarella, Asiago, pecorino, and Parmigiano with cream makes for a super melty, saucy combination that will have you licking your fingers and the plate. That cheese sauce spread over the airy Neapolitan crust is to-die-for — but that's not all.

My favorite thing about this pizza is the fig sauce that comes with it. Packaged separately so you can drizzle it over the pizza after baking, it brings all the flavor of a well-designed charcuterie board with jam and cheese, and makes me understand why this pie is called an Italian cheese board. Sweet, with a little acidity from vinegar and orange juice, it's the perfect way to make a frozen pizza feel gourmet.

I have a question for the reader — does this pizza look like a margherita to you? Because to me it seems more like a basic light-cheese pizza with some tomatoes strewn about. There are a few things that make a margherita a margherita, like those signature globs of mozzarella spread like constellations over a bright red background, and the fresh basil leaves that brighten up each slice. 

But alas, these traits are nowhere to be seen. The mozzarella is just a light smattering, and according to the box, there's supposed to be dried basil at play, but any fresh, green basil flavor or color is completely lost.

This one just didn't cut it as a margherita, and didn't even have enough cheese to call it a cheese pizza. The crust is bland, and there's nothing to write home about with the sauce. I wouldn't recommend it to a friend or buy it again myself — best to skip it and save the margheritas for a shop.

I'm surprised to be marking a four-cheese pizza (which I would normally love) as a "skip," but this one, unfortunately, will join the list of grocery store frozen pizzas to be left behind in the freezer aisle. It's really the crust, not the cheese, that's the culprit. It's thin but not floppy — too crispy, too hard, too much like cardboard. It's exactly what gives frozen pizzas a bad rep, and even that beautiful combination of fontina, mozzarella, provolone, and Parmesan couldn't save it.

The sauce also doesn't shine here. It's more of an orange hue than the familiar bright red marinara one is used to, and there isn't any succulent, slow-cooked tomato flavor detectable. Considering that the four-cheese 365-brand pizza is the same price ($5.29) as all the other thin-crusted 365s, I would be much happier purchasing one of the other options that load up on toppings and have more flavor to distract from the crust. If you're craving a cheese pizza, this isn't the brand to buy.

To choose this list of pizzas, I bought all of the Whole Foods-branded pizzas, including the 365 brand and Whole Foods Market brand. Best to judge the whole selection! All of them were baked per the instructions on the back of the box — typically at 400 F or 425 F for 14-16 minutes.

In deciding which ones to skip, I looked for those that just weren't true to the style they advertised or that were downright disappointing. Plenty of these were delicious and craveable, so why waste money on something that's not good?