Gluten Free Pizza from Fresh Brothers

Fresh Brothers Pizza Box
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

Every few months a new type of food becomes popular among companies offering gluten free entrees and in 2012, the name of the game is pizza. After several years of suffering through the stale, cardboard discs of gluten free pie crusts, major pizza companies are now getting in on the game along with regional pizza restaurants jumping in, too.

One such restaurant is Fresh Brothers, which is a pizza chain in southern California with around a half dozen locations in and around Los Angeles County. The biography of the owners suggests that the recipes used by the company came from their experiences with local pizzerias in the 1970s. And they are just one of the many pizza restaurants to have started offering gluten free varieties of their pies.

Like most other gluten free offerings, the pizza from Fresh Brothers is only available in a smaller size - medium - although the size of that pie is fairly respectable and would easily feed two people. Someone with a bigger appetite might want to snag an entire pie for himself.

Fresh Brothers Cheese Gluten Free Pizza - Hungry Now?
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

The most important part of gluten free pizza is always going to be the crust because it's the specific element within the recipe which must be modified to accommodate the dietary needs of someone with a gluten or wheat allergy. 

For Fresh Brothers, their crust tastes more like a regular pizza crust than like one of the flaps of the cardboard box in which it comes delivered.

And this is a good thing, because often a gluten free crust will look like a round yet tasteless saltine cracker and will have the same sort of consistency as well.

For anyone who has eaten a regular pizza crust before, it's easy to tell the difference between the taste of a crust that has wheat and the gluten free variety, but Fresh Brothers does have a good way with toppings and their general approach to serving gluten free pizza seems to be one worth checking out. The crust is slightly thicker than a thin crust pizza yet it has the consistency of a regular pie.


It's worth noting that the crust is a tad denser than you might expect from pizza. But I think this is normal for gluten free foods that are placed in the oven.

Fresh Brothers Cheese Gluten Free Pizza
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

Fresh Brothers would get bonus points if they could devise a way to make their gluten free pizza a little thicker, but in its present form, it's definitely one to check out for anyone who has a sensitivity to gluten. 

A note to anyone interested in alternative toppings: it's a good idea to confirm whether specific toppings conform to being gluten free.

And regarding toppings, the nice thing about the crust is that it's of a suitable thickness to accommodate toppings beyond just cheese and sauce. If your dietary restrictions allow for it, the BBQ chicken pizza is highly recommended.

A word of caution for anyone interested in getting a gluten free pizza is that if a person has Celiac Disease, it's always important to confirm the type of cooking conditions in which the pizza is made. Most pizza restaurants will have common preparation areas and traces of gluten might be present in the vicinity of the pizza. Generally, pizza from a restaurant is going to have a high chance of coming into contact with traces of gluten and for individuals with serious allergies, caution is advised.

Fresh Brothers Herbs and Parmesan Topping
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

Fresh Brothers Gluten Free Report Card

The Good Things:

This pizza does indeed taste like pizza and the toppings are great. The size is a bit larger than traditional gluten-free pizza crust. The thickness of the crust is also pretty nice for holding a lot of toppings.

What Could be Improved:

The eternal struggle for people who are forced to eat gluten free or other alternative foods is not the fact that the food tastes like cardboard so much as it is that the food costs an arm and a leg. Fresh Brothers is definitely worth a taste and will probably be a great pizza experience, but it will also set you back a few dollars more than a regular pizza. I always joke that since there's no wheat in the pizza, it's missing an ingredient, so technically it should be cheaper! So far I don't think the gluten free industry has caught on...

Fresh Brothers Cheese Gluten Free Pizza
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

Tips for a Great Pizza:

Get on Fresh Brothers' mailing list! They offer coupons each week and most of their specials are available for their gluten free crusts as well. 


The gluten free variety will be a few dollars more even with the coupon, but getting on their email list is highly recommended for timely discounts.

To find out more about Fresh Brothers and their gluten free pizza options, click here