Tips for better baked frozen pizza

For better baked frozen pizza, ignore the instructions on the box. Fully thaw the pizza the bake it for 5-8 minutes on the hottest temperature your oven will go.

Having recently done a lot of experimenting with "upgrading" cheap frozen pizzas to make them taste less, well, cheap and frozen, this has been by far the most important trick.

Commercial pizzas are baked in stone ovens that get up to 700- 1000 degrees, which is why they bake so quickly and end up with nice crispy crusts and un-burned everything else. Your home oven will never get that hot but you can try to get as close as possible to emulate the effect.

Cook the pizza on the bare rack to maximize air circulation if you don't have a pizza stone or a cast iron skillet/slab. If you have either of those, heat it in the oven first and then cook the pizza on that once the oven hits its max temperature.

For even better pizza, brush the crust with olive oil before you bake and sprinkle either fresh garlic or garlic powder on it. (The garlic flavor helps to balance out the usually heavy handed and far too sweet sauce that goes on your average frozen pizza).

Edit: Forgot to mention, keep a close eye on the pizza if you're going to do this! 5-8 minutes is a pretty general number and, depending on the temperature your oven maxes out at, your pizza could go from "perfect" to "burned to a crisp" in the span of a minute.