Not what I would take for my lunch at the office. If I were you, I would just skip this altogether.
If you didn't already know it, my husband and I go grocery shopping at Target once a week. As we walked down the frozen pizza aisle, this Red Baron Pizza Melt caught my eye. I was instantly reminded of my high school days when they used to have "Pizza Petes" in the a la carte line. It was basically like grilled cheese but with pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella. So I thought I had to give this a try! Our blog isn't just about pizza in the traditional sense, it's about all things pizza! Speaking of which, I just remembered Eric and I have pizza flavored Lays potato chips in the pantry we still need to try. Be on the lookout for that blog post.
Ok back to this pizza melt. So we get home from grocery shopping and it's right around noon. I figure now is as good a time as any to have this sandwich. And cooking it was very simple. I just had to place the melt, face open on the crisping tray into the microwave and cook it for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. Then I had to let it sit for a minute before folding the two slices of bread together to create the "melt". Well as soon as I pulled it from the microwave, I could tell it wasn't going to be that great.
Now, I have had great experiences with frozen microwavable pizza items in the past. I used to eat Red Barons mini deep dish microwavable pizzas all the time when I was younger. And I enjoy Lean Cuisine's microwavable pizzas too. But this was just a really sad excuse for a sandwich.
When you read the box, you expect that you are going to bite into this nice, crunchy, toast-like bread, but it was the exact opposite. The crusts were very tough and chewy and the bread itself was moist and not crunchy at all. There was maybe a bite here or there that was kind of crunchy and had some butteriness to it, but it was not enough to save this poor little sandwich.
The pizza sauce was the part that concerned me the most. As I'm sitting here eating this thing, I'm getting closer to the middle and my first thought was, "Is this supposed to have sauce on it? Didn't the box say pizza sauce?" I literally put my melt down, went to the recycling bin and dug around for the box only to confirm that it did say pizza sauce in the description. You already know it's bad if you have to ask if there is sauce on something. If you looked closely, the bread, under the cheese, did have a slightly orange color to it, which at first I thought may have been fats from the cheese or pepperoni. But it was apparently the sauce.
And speaking of the cheese, if I hadn't seen that it was there when I cooked it, a person lacking vision would not have even known it was on the sandwich. It had no distinctive flavor. Not even a texture distinguishable from the bread. I even tried pulling some cheese off, that didn't have any pepperoni fats on it, and it was like eating flavorless nothing.
The pepperoni was ok. Red Baron does have a spicy pepperoni, but it actually made the sandwich worse. If you asked me to summarize the overall experience, it was like eating a pepperoni and toast sandwich. That's all you could taste. Chewy bread with some very spicy pepperoni. The pepperoni overpowered everything.
If I were you, I would just skip this all together. Don't grab it for an easy microwavable lunch at the office. Don't grab it for your kids.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I would rather you pick up Totino's Pizza Rolls before you bought this for your children. I'm really trying not to be mean, but I wouldn't even feed this to my dog. They would probably prefer the peanut butter pretzels we buy from the local dog bakery over whatever this was.