08/27/2026
Frozen pizza has been a staple of household freezers for decades, and with good reason. Whether you’ve got hangry kids on your hands in the middle of the day, no time or energy to make dinner, or you’re in dire need of a fourth meal after a night of revelry, having a DiGiorno or Newman’s Own tucked away in the freezer comes in handy.
But even the top-tier frozen pizzas don’t come anywhere close to matching the quality of the freshly made pies from your favorite pizzeria. It’s strictly a ‘Meh, this’ll do’ meal. In this day and age, can’t someone do better than the bland frozen pies that have been clogging up supermarket frozen food aisles forever?
Enter Pizza Freak, a Montgomery County-based frozen pizza maker specializing in Detroit-style-inspired pies with light and airy crusts that don’t taste anything at all like something that was just sitting in your freezer beneath a family-sized bag of frozen peas.
Pizza Freak began as a pandemic experiment in the food lab at Philadelphia’s Drexel University between kitchen equipment entrepreneur Matt McKenney and chef Brad Daniels, who once made pasta at Philly restaurateur Marc Vetri’s James Beard Award-winning eatery Osteria and currently owns the Italian restaurant Tresini in Ambler. Miami-based chef Brad Kilgore is also a co-founder.
McKenney told me they spent two years of research and development on their pies, eventually arriving at a three-day fermentation process for their rectangular, focaccia-like crust, which they make using King Arthur flour and bake in sheet trays lined with extra virgin olive oil. Their sauce is made from Bianco DiNapoli Tomatoes, and the cheese—which is spread edge-to-edge to come out Frico-style (crispy and caramelized)—comes from the Grande Cheese Company, the mozzarella of choice among many pizzaiolo.
“We tested dough recipes, read a bunch of books, did a spreadsheet of recipes, then, when we got stuck, it was back to the drawing board,” McKenney said. “The dough fermentation delivers a light, crispy texture, and deeper, more satisfying flavors. It’s also more digestible that way.”
