Arrowhead Mills' Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix

Brand: Arrowhead Mills

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Product Name: Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix

Location Purchased: King Soopers

Cost: $6.99

Note: This product was part of Z's Blind Pizza Crust Taste Test! See the results!

Total From A to Z: 2 Stars

A's Review: * *
This pizza crust is really yeasty and fluffy. There's really no other flavor in the crust besides yeast. The texture is not bad, but the yeast dominates all other impressions. Like the 365 crust, this needs more flavor.

Z's Review: * *
Getting four pizza crusts mixed and out of the oven around the same time for this taste test was no easy task! So I have lots of comments about the process of making these pizzas! This mix was a little bit time intensive because it required letting the yeast sit in warm water for 10 minutes before mixing it into the dough and then letting the dough rise for 30 minutes before topping and baking. So with the time it takes to mix the ingredients and 15-20 minutes for baking, this pizza takes at least an hour to make. We also had to take the suggestion on the box and add some GF flour while we were mixing the dough because it was really sticky. However, we didn't want to mess up the recipe and the flour didn't actually seem to help too much with the stickiness, so we didn't add much. (SIDE NOTE: One useful tip for dealing with really sticky dough - wet your hands or your rolling pin before touching the dough!) It's important to note that following the instructions on the box and using all the mix yields two pizza crusts.

As far as the final product goes, this crust was really soft and doughy and you could really taste the yeast. It was too yeasty for me. But it was so light and fluffy that I think this mix might make better bread or breadsticks than pizza dough.

Enjoy Life's Soft Baked Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Brand: Enjoy Life

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Product Name: Soft Baked Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Location Purchased: Whole Foods

Cost: $3.99

Note: This product was part of Z's Blind Chocolate Chip Cookie Taste Test! See the Results!

Total From A to Z: 2 Stars

A's Review: * *
Soft and chewy, but with a strange almost-too-soft texture and a weird secondary flavor, one that reminded me of ginger.

Z's Review: * *
These cookies were just slightly larger than bite-sized. They were soft and crumbly and were almost more like a tiny cake than a cookie. The chocolate chips were pretty little. This cookie also had a sort of weird flavor - like they used an unusual ingredient. Not my favorite gluten-free chocolate chip cookie.

Udi's Cinnamon Rolls

Brand: Udi's
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Product Name: Cinnamon Rolls

Location Purchased: King Soopers

Cost: $5.99 for four frozen rolls


Total from A to Z: 2 Stars

A's Review: * *

Some background is pertinent here: cinnamon rolls are held in very high regard in my family. Maybe a little too high, but that is a discussion for another time. I had high expectations for these since they looked and smelled like real cinnamon rolls. They came from the freezer section, which is apparently not unusual for gluten-free bread products, as they had lots of company just loafing around with them. I thought it was weird that there were no preparation instructions on the packaging, so I went to Udi's website thinking that they must have instructions there. Alas, there was no love from the website. So Z and I were left to our own devices. We could not come up with one single way to make them not rock hard. The taste was excellent, on par with any good cinnamon roll out there. But after being forced to soak the dishes in the sink to remove the concrete-like roll remnants (rollmnants?), I was left feeling doubly unimpressed. They might be better used in construction of a tasty strawbale-esque doll house or something because of how they stand up to the elements.

Z's Review:* *
We found these cinnamon rolls in the gluten-free freezer section of our local grocery store and thought that they would make a nice weekend breakfast treat for me. Instead, we were sort of disappointed with them. For some reason there are no instructions on the package for how to defrost and/or heat the rolls. Left to our own devices we tried multiple methods of defrosting and heating to try to get the rolls soft enough to eat. We tried defrosting and heating one completely in the microwave. We tried defrosting one in the fridge and then microwaving it to heat it. We tried defrosting another and then heating it in the oven. But no matter what we tried, the result always seemed to be a gummy rock. And they got even harder as they cooled down, to the point where it was difficult for me to cut them with a knife (due to my arthritis). I don't know if this was a result of gluten-free flour or if we just didn't know how to heat them properly, but in any event it was pretty disappointing. Other than being hard as a rock they tasted pretty good - the flavor was just like a regular cinnamon roll. The frosting was delicious, though it was already on the roll so we always ended up melting it more than we wanted to. In the end, I don't think I would buy this product again unless I knew there was some way of making it softer!