Allrecipes / Abbey Littlejohn
It’s Friday night—the work week was long, the fridge is empty, and everyone’s hungry. Delivery pizza to the rescue! Nothing hits the spot like the perfect slice of gooey, greasy-in-a-good-way delivery pizza. But the disappointment of tasteless, cardboard-like pizza is enough to put you off delivery for months.
Which pizza has the good crust? And which chain had that one with the really bad sauce that one time? Delivery pizza joints are similar in their offerings, so it can be hard to keep them straight and know which ones are really worth it. No one wants to waste their money on subpar pizza, so I put an entire bottle of Tums in a decorative dish on my kitchen table, invited over some friends, called every chain pizza place within delivery radius, and got to work.
How I Tested the Delivery Chain Cheese Pizzas
To keep things apples to apples, I ordered a plain cheese pizza from each chain. Then my tasters and I tried them all side by side to be able to compare them, focusing on appearance, the flavor of the dough, sauce, and cheese, and the texture of the crust.
4th Place: Papa Johns Original Cheese Pizza
Allrecipes / Abbey Littlejohn
Rating: 3/10
This is the pizza I remember from childhood birthday parties and post-soccer-game celebrations. And like many nostalgic things from our adolescence, Papa Johns doesn’t hold up to my 2023 sensibilities. This pizza was so soft and extremely thick that it felt like half a loaf of Wonder bread in my mouth. It tasted super doughy, and the crust had a slight chemical flavor—almost like I could taste whatever additives and dough conditioners it has to make it so thick and soft. The cheese was a letdown as well. It was thick and tough with a distinct artificial flavor and didn’t have that classic gooey cheese pull texture. It did, however, come with the iconic garlic-flavored butter-style goop to dip crusts in, which absolutely tasted every bit as good as it did when I was a kid. This was the only slice I didn’t finish, and the only pizza we threw away after the taste test.
3rd Place: Little Caesars Thin Crust Cheese Pizza
Allrecipes / Abbey Littlejohn
Rating: 5/10
What stood out most about this pizza was the crust. It was cracker-thin and very crunchy. I’d say it was definitely too thin, but it was a nice reprieve from some of the overly fluffy crusts on other pies. The crust had an intense artificial butter flavor that made the pizza taste oddly like club crackers which, while weird, wasn’t entirely bad. After a few bites, though, the butter-flavored oil collected in a film on the roof of my mouth. Overall, it reminded me a lot of a very crisp tortilla pizza you might eat after school. The cheese was a thin layer that got nicely browned towards the edges, making it taste a bit like a Cheez-It. The sauce was mostly unremarkable, with a few bites hinting at dried basil.
2nd Place: Pizza Hut Hand-Tossed Regular Cheese Pizza with Classic Marinara
Allrecipes / Abbey Littlejohn
Rating: 8/10
The one thing that hindered this pizza was its extreme sweetness. The dough and sauce were both very sweet, which threw off the whole pie’s balance. This pizza had the best cheese; it was gooey and stretchy, with the most bubbly browning. It was the only one that I bit into and thought the cheese was exceptionally flavorful. The sauce was overpoweringly sweet, but under all that, there was a slight herb flavor that gave the sauce much more dimension than Papa Johns or Little Caesars. If the crust had been less sweet, it would have been far and away the best crust on this list. The exterior was crisp with a good chew and excellent browning, giving it a deep, almost caramelized flavor. There was some extremely pleasant bubbling on the crust that gave it a slightly flaky texture when I bit into it. I would order this Pizza Hut pizza again, but it wasn’t my absolute favorite.
1st Place: Domino’s Hand-Tossed Cheese Pizza with Robust Inspired Tomato Sauce
Allrecipes / Abbey Littlejohn
Rating: 9/10
This pie was the unanimous winner; there was even some bickering over the last piece. Unlike all of the other pizzas on this list, the sauce had big flavor. I was surprised at how savory it was; I felt like it had been simmering all day. There was a slight sweetness, but it was well balanced with a good amount of salt, some welcome herbs, and a slight tinge of heat that set it apart from the rest. This pizza had a strong Parmesan and garlic flavor. It seemed like the crust was dusted in some sort of buttery garlic, herb, and cheese blend, which, while annoying on my fingers, brought a lot of flavor to the party. The bottom of the pizza was also dusted with semolina, which lended even more toasty flavor and a classic New York pizzeria-style texture. In general, the crust on this pizza was the most like good bakery bread—the outer crust really reminded me of a good, crusty loaf. The cheese tasted like real cheese and was in the perfect ratio compared to the sauce and crust. It was the most flavorful of the bunch and felt closer to a pizzeria-style or homemade pizza. All said and done, this is definitely the delivery pizza I’ll be ordering from here on out.
Read the original article on Allrecipes
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