Sonoma Flatbread plant-based pizza looks nothing like advertised. Sloppy toppings and plant-based sausage that tastes like beef jerky pencil erasers.
Chris and I got a little adventurous in the frozen pizza aisle at Target and it backfired on both of us. He got the Red Baron pizza melt, and I got this Sonoma Flatbreads Plant-Based Sausage and Peppers. I love trying new things, and I've heard a lot of great things about Beyond Meat in the news. I think I've even had a beyond burger at a restaurant and enjoyed it, so I'm certainly not one of those anti-plant-based-foods people. So trust me when I say I gave it an honest try.
Sonoma was sketch from the very beginning - when I opened the box I noticed all the ingredients were spat into the very center of the pizza. I paid $7.99 for this thing and they couldn't be bothered to spit the ingredients evenly over the surface. And no they were not loose under the plastic and could have rolled around, they were frozen in place. In fact, I had to carefully pick the "sausage" off and redistribute it myself before putting it in the oven. So we haven't even tasted it yet and that's one strike for being objectively low end.
I followed the instructions and put the pizza on a pan. The cooking range gave a huge variation in time from 14-20 minutes. I took it out right at 14 minutes and still had very brown and crispy edges and a flimsy moist middle.
The crust itself is slightly cheesy tasting because it is made of broccoli and cheese. I gotta say, compared to the photo on the box, I have about 2 inches of basically burnt cheese toward the edge of the curst compared to edge to edge cheese in the photo. I used the shortest cooking time, can you imagine if I left it in for 20 minutes?
Let's get into the flavor. The overall taste profile is cheese and peppers. The peppers tasted like decent peppers with even a hint of roasted char, although they came in little squishy cubes rather than longer strips shown on the box.
Where is the sausage? The name-brand Beyond Meat sausage that is so proudly displayed on the box? If you pick one off individually it smells and tastes like a beef jerky pencil eraser.
I was so angry after I finished half the pizza. It was just terrible and borderline false advertising, it looked nothing like the photo on the box. The slimy peppers were cubed not strips, and the sausage pellets came in a heap in the center. What a mess, just awful.