The bench · Ready bases
Part-baked and pre-stretched. You trade the stretch, the rise and some of the flavour for ten minutes and no mess. A base is the fastest route to a pizza but rarely the cheapest. Our cost calculator puts every route side by side for the number of pizzas you actually want.
A ready base skips the thaw, the prove and the stretch entirely: top it and bake it. Seven here run from £1.30 to £3.25 a base, and the ingredient lists are further apart than in any other category we have compared — the shortest is seven ingredients, the longest more than twenty. Cheapest is not the most processed and dearest is not the cleanest, which is the whole reason we print the declarations in full.
About the ratings on this page. We have not tested these. Where a seller publishes a customer rating we record it per source, with the count and the month checked — never blended, and never used to order the table. Where a maker publishes no product rating we record their company-wide score instead and label it as such — a Trustpilot score measures delivery and service, not whether the food is any good. Counts under about 20 are marked as too thin to judge. We publish nothing of our own until we have bought the product and cooked with it twice; where we have, the row carries our verdict and who wrote it. Our method.
| Product | Pack | Price | Per base | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schär Gluten Free Pizza Bases (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-01 | 2 × 150g | £3.55 Ocado | £1.78 | Ambient |
4 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsMaize Starch, Rice Flour, Sourdough 13% (Rice Flour, Water), Water, Potato Starch, Thickener: Hydroxypropyl Methyl Cellulose, Rice Starch, Maize Flour, Glucose Syrup, Yeast, Dextrose, Extra Virgin Olive Oil 1.6%, Sunflower Oil, Vegetable Fibre (Psyllium), Iodised Salt, Ethyl Alcohol, Soya Protein, Raising Agents, Acids: Tartaric, Citric. Carries the Crossed Grain symbol, licence IT-016-159. Cheapest gluten-free option anywhere on this site by a distance — the delivered gluten-free dough balls run £3.24 to £4.13 each. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Crosta & Mollica Sourdough Base (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-02 | 270g · 1 base, sauced | £2.70 Tesco | £2.70 | Chilled |
No declared additives Ingredients and ratingsWheat Flour, Tomato Sauce (24.5%) (Tomato Puree, Chopped Tomato, Olive Oil, Salt), Water, Sunflower Oil, Salt, Natural Mother Yeast, Yeast. Comes sauced. A real mother-yeast ferment and no preservative — the cleanest declaration of any supermarket pizza product we have read. Price read at Tesco; the link goes to the producer’s own page for this chilled base, because the version ASDA lists at £2.50 is their frozen line, a different product. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| East Pizzas Sourdough Bases (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-03 | 4 or 10 × 12″ £15.00 / £32.50 |
£15.00 – £32.50 | £3.25 | Chilled · 3 days |
No declared additives Ingredients and ratingsFortified Flour (calcium carbonate, iron, niacin, thiamin, folic acid), salt, water. Semolina to stop sticking. Hand-stretched and 72-hour proved. Three ingredients — nothing else on this page comes close. Free UK delivery over £35; Scotland and Northern Ireland surcharged £9. Freezes for three months. Note: a 25-base pack has been advertised; the product page currently offers 4 or 10. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Homemade Pizza Club Part-Baked (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-04 | 10 or 15 × 11″ From £23.00 |
From £23.00 | £2.30 | Not published |
Additives: not published Ingredients and ratingsFull ingredients not published by the brand Also sold sauced at £2.40 a base. Ingredients are not published on the product listing. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Biona Organic Italian Spelt (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-05 | 260g · 2 bases | £2.60 Ocado | £1.30 | Ambient |
No declared additives Ingredients and ratingsSpelt Wheat Flour* (52%), Water, Wholemeal Spelt Flour* (9%), Extra Virgin Olive Oil* (5%), Salt, Yeast, Natural Rosemary Flavour. *Certified organic. Seven ingredients, no preservative and no raising agents — the shortest declaration of any ready-made base we have found. Spelt is a wheat, so this is not a gluten-free option. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Loyd Grossman Flame Baked (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-06 | 220g · 2 bases | £3.00 Ocado · £1.75 on offer | £1.50 | Ambient |
6 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsWheat Flour (with added Calcium, Folic Acid, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Sourdough Culture (4%) (Sourdough (Wheat Flour, Water), Spirit Vinegar, Salt, Wheat Starch), Extra Virgin Olive Oil (4%), Rapeseed Oil, Yeast, Spirit Vinegar, Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Preservatives (Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Propionate), Sea Salt, Salt, Wheat Starch. Sold on its sourdough, which is 4% of the recipe and sits alongside raising agents and two preservatives. Per-base figure is at the list price of £3.00; it was on promotion at £1.75 the pack when we read it. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Wholecreations Gluten Free Stonebaked (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)BS-07 | 2 × 185g | £4.00 Ocado | £2.00 | Frozen |
4 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsWater, Tapioca Starch, Maize Starch, Rice Flour, Rapeseed Oil, Bamboo Fibre, Glycerine, Sourdough Rice Flour, Yeast, Psyllium Husk Fibre, Sugar, Buckwheat Flour, Thickeners: Xanthan Gum, Hydroxypropyl Methyl Cellulose, Salt. Gluten free, dairy free and vegan. Water is the first ingredient because these arrive baked and frozen rather than as a dry base. The most expensive base per unit on this table. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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East Pizzas’ base is fortified flour, salt and water. Schär’s gluten-free base needs nineteen, including a cellulose thickener, two acids, raising agents and ethyl alcohol — because without gluten, something has to do gluten’s job.
Schär bases are £1.78 each. Delivered gluten-free dough balls are £3.24 to £4.13. If you are baking gluten-free on a budget, the supermarket base is less than half the price — a different product, but a real saving.
They are the fastest route to a pizza and the least like one. A base is already baked, so you are reheating rather than baking: there is no oven spring left, no rise in the rim, and the crumb is set before it reaches you. What you get in exchange is a five-minute pizza with no thawing and no proving. Read the declaration before you judge the price — the range on this page runs from a short list of ingredients to one with a substantial additive count.
A ready-made gluten-free base, by a wide margin. Gluten-free bases start at £1.78 each, while delivered gluten-free dough balls run £3.24 to £4.13. Gluten-free is the one category on this site where ready-made undercuts making it yourself, because the flour blends are expensive and a dedicated facility costs more to run. If you are coeliac, confirm the certification wording with the seller before ordering, because facilities and recipes change.
Preheat a steel or heavy tray for a full 45 minutes and put the base straight onto it — not onto a cold tray that then has to heat up with the pizza sitting on it. Keep the sauce thin and go easy on wet toppings such as fresh mozzarella or mushrooms, which release water the base cannot absorb. A base has no rise to lose, so the only variable left is how fast you drive heat into the bottom.
Every specimen record, correction and price change as it is published. About one email a month, written by a person, never a brand’s press release.