Wilder Shaw / Cheapism
Frozen pizzas are a beautiful thing, but gluten-free living doesn’t have to be all about cauliflower. Enter Banza, a company making pizza dough out of chickpeas.
Is chickpea pizza crust healthier than others? How does Banza taste? I tried four of Banza’s frozen pies and ranked them based on flavor and comparability to traditional dough. Here are the best Banza frozen pizzas you can buy.
Banza provided samples for this review. Prices and availability are subject to change.
Chickpeas, tapioca, cocoa butter, olive oil, and water are the main ingredients listed in Banza’s crispy chickpea crusts before the list devolves into chemicals and compounds I can’t understand. Banza claims that because its crust is made from chickpeas, these pizzas are even slightly more nutritious than a traditional cauliflower pizza crust, boasting more fiber, more protein, and less carbs.
These pizzas are as easy to prepare as any frozen pies. The instructions say to preheat your oven to 400 degrees, pop them in for about 15 minutes (18 for the vegan cheese), and you’re good to go.
That's what I did, and each one was pretty much perfect.
(Psst: Take a peek at our guide on the best ways to reheat your pizza.)
Available from Instacart
This was the first one I tasted, and my immediate reaction was how similar Banza's pizza crusts are compared to regular frozen pizza dough. I was impressed instantly. That said, this shouldn’t be hard, because the secret to frozen pizza crust made out of chickpeas is the same as the secret to frozen pizza crust made out of anything: Put a ton of stuff on it.
Banza's roasted veggie pizza is covered in red and yellow peppers, spinach, onions, cheese, and sauce, and if you’re really able to detect the incredibly subtle chickpea flavor in this, you’re probably Daredevil. Because in my opinion, it’s damn near impossible.
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$7.48 from Walmart
This falls just underneath the frozen veggie pizza for me simply because that’s where a Margherita pizza would fall for me in real life. Gooey, cheesy pizza that stretches from end to end is what my childhood pizza memories were built on, and Margherita’s clump-of-cheese-here-and-there style isn’t my favorite thing in the world.
Aside from that, as far as I’m concerned, this is still indistinguishable from normal frozen pizza. Nailed it again.
$33 for a two-pack from Banza
While brand collabs are a little bit of an eye-roll these days, I have to respect the simplicity here: cheese pizza with a Tabasco-infused red sauce. This could have so easily been ruined with some weird frozen sausage or a stupid type of cheese, but everybody kept their cool and learned how to edit.
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you,” says the back of the box in regards to its spiciness, and that’s a smart thing to put there, because as I wiped the sweat that poured from my forehead after eating a slice of this pizza, I began to wonder if it had been made clear.
Tabasco Sauce isn’t even that spicy; we all know this. What I didn’t notice was that Banza’s sauce is made with standard Tabasco, yes — but it’s also made with Tabasco’s Scorpion Sauce. This is Tabasco’s hottest product, about 8-10 times the heat of a standard bottle. It’s tasty and certainly delivers on the spiciness, so if you can handle it, be bold and go forth.
Available from Instacart
I can’t beat around the bush on this one: 99% of the time I’m eating a frozen pizza, I’m eating it under the influence. A house party or a cabin weekend or something. In those moments, it really doesn’t matter what the hell I’m putting in my body, because frozen pizza is frozen pizza, ya know? If I can’t distinguish between Banza’s crust and a standard crust when I’m fully sober, there’s no way I can do it when I’m not.
Plant-based cheese is Banza’s weak link. This stuff really isn’t doing it for me. It reminds me more of a béchamel cheese sauce than actual cheese. The box specifically says to leave it for 2-3 minutes after you’ve made the pizza, but I gave it even longer than that and it still never really came together. The coating it left on my teeth was too unpleasant for me to return.
Related: 15 Delicious Pasta Substitutes for Healthier, Creative Meals