My wife just started a gluten-free diet not too long ago, and so that means I’ve kinda started one, too.  So now when she makes spaghetti, it’s with gluten-free noodles, and so on and so forth.  While even my unsophisticated palate can detect a taste difference when these items are eaten plain, thankfully, they’re generally covered with enough sauces and/or meats to hide the difference in the finished product.

But even then I must confess to being completely overwhelmed with terror when my wife brought home a box of gluten-free pizza crust mix.  I mean, think of your favorite pizza…chances are, the taste of the crust is at least part of the reason you enjoy it so much.  And since gluten-free products, at least in my opinion, generally have weaker flavors, I was not too excited to see it ruin our tasty homemade pizzas.

Each box of the mix makes two pizza crusts, which I would estimate at around 12” in diameter.  The crusts were very thin and crispy, which thankfully is a style both of us like, so I give it some points for that.  I tasted bits of the crust without anything on it, and must say that, true to form, it was relatively bland.  Really, it didn’t taste like much at all.  But it did have a great crunch and a texture consistent with “regular” pizza crust.  And considering the awful flavors that I imagined at great length while the dough was setting in the refrigerator (it must sit in the fridge for 30 minutes before use), a lack of flavor was actually very welcome in my book.

In the end, we topped it with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, ground sausage, onions, and topped it off with some freshly-grated parmesan, and it was seriously one of the better pizzas I’ve had in a long while, either restaurant or otherwise.  Of course, the other ingredients played a bigger role in that, as the crust’s only job is holding all the toppings, but again, the thin crust and satisfying crunch definitely added to the pizza experience.  Even when we heated up the leftovers (that we refrigerated) the next day, the crust lost none of its texture or crunch, and the pizza itself was just as good, if not better, as it was the day before.

We bought these back when gluten-free products were only available as Special Buys, so it’s good to see that they have added some of these items permanently in their stores.  Gluten-free products can get very pricey, but most of them that I’ve tried from Aldi (pasta notwithstanding) have been affordable and pretty tasty.  Hopefully they will expand the line as the months go on.

Overall: 8/10.  While short on flavor, it does what a pizza crust is supposed to do (hold toppings) and does it well.  I also gave it high marks for texture, as it was thin and very crispy out of the oven, giving most bites a nice, satisfying crunch.  I also liked that the box contained two roughly 12” crusts, which allowed both my wife and I to make our own pizzas, and at just $2.99, I didn’t think the price was that bad at all.  In short, I would definitely scoop these up again in a heartbeat, and will definitely be less nervous when trying other items from their “liveGFree” line.