The bench · Supermarket
Supermarket pizza dough, compared
Cheaper than anything delivered — and a different product to it. Read the declarations before you decide that is a bargain. The cheapest supermarket dough here is £1.20 a pizza. Our cost calculator shows what the delivered brands actually cost once postage and whole packs are accounted for, so you can see the real gap.
Supermarket pizza dough makes a pizza for £1.20 to £1.50, undercutting every delivered dough on this site. What you are buying, though, is not the same thing. Of the eight products below, four are chemically raised and preserved rather than fermented — and the four that are not are all frozen, and all from the same producer. The pattern is easy to spot once you know what to look for: deactivated yeast in the list, raising agents doing the work, and a preservative to hold it on the shelf.
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 pizza | Format |
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| Pizza Express Ready Rolled (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-01 | 400g · makes 2 | £2.40 Tesco | £1.20 | Chilled |
8 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsWheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Ethanol, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (2%), Raising Agents (Sodium Bicarbonate, Calcium Phosphates, Diphosphates), Sugar, Salt, Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Wheat Protein, Deactivated Yeast, Flour Treatment Agent (Ascorbic Acid). Twelve ingredients. Note the deactivated yeast — this dough is chemically raised, not fermented. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| ASDA Pizza Dough (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-02 | 400g · makes 2 | £2.50 | £1.25 | Chilled |
6 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsFortified Wheat Flour, Water, Fermented Durum Wheat Flour, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (1.4%), Raising Agents (Calcium Phosphates, Sodium Carbonates), Sugar, Salt, Deactivated Yeast, Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Wheat Protein, Flour Treatment Agent (Ascorbic Acid). Almost identical to the M&S declaration below, down to the fermented durum wheat flour and the additive order. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| M&S Sourdough Pizza Dough (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-03 | 400g · makes 2 | £3.00 Ocado | £1.50 | Chilled |
6 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsWheatflour, Water, Fermented Durum Wheatflour, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Raising Agent: Calcium Phosphates, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sugar, Salt, Deactivated Dried Yeast, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate, Wheat Protein, Flour Treatment Agent: Ascorbic Acid. Sold as sourdough. There is no sourdough starter in the declaration — the flavour comes from fermented durum wheat flour, and the rise from raising agents. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| The Northern Dough Co Original (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-04 | 2 × 220g · makes 2 | £2.60 Ocado | £1.30 | Frozen |
Ingredients, ratings and our verdictWheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Salt, Wheat Fibre, Sugar, Yeast, Olive Oil. Seven ingredients, live yeast, no preservative and no raising agents — the same recipe they sell direct. The only frozen dough on this table. Our verdict — bought, baked twice, eaten Bought as the two-ball box from Sainsbury’s. It did not stretch well, so opening a base was a fight from the start; it never developed a crust worth the name; and it baked out dry, like cardboard. It was not pleasant to eat. Of everything we have baked so far, this is the one I would tell someone outright not to buy. This is the most contested verdict on the site, and we are not going to hide that. Look directly below: 406 Ocado shoppers rate this dough 4.5, which makes it the best-rated product in our supermarket table. We are one household with two bakes; they are four hundred people. Weigh those how you like — we publish both, in that order, and we are not withholding what we found because it is unpopular. If further bakes change our mind we will say so on this row, with the date. Simon Bell · September 2026 · how we test Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Jus-Rol Pizza Dough (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-05 | 400g Pizza count not published |
£3.10 Waitrose | — | Chilled |
6 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsWheat Flour, Water, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Ethyl Alcohol, Raising Agents (Glucono-Delta-Lactone, Potassium Carbonates), Sugar, Dehydrated Wheat Sourdough (0.6%), Deactivated Yeast, Flour Treatment Agent (Ascorbic Acid). Sold on its sourdough. The sourdough is 0.6% and dehydrated, the yeast is deactivated, and the rise comes from raising agents — the same pattern as the ASDA and M&S doughs above. Waitrose states “Serves 4” but publishes no pizza count, so we do not calculate a per-pizza figure. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| The Northern Dough Co Wholemeal (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-06 | 2 × 220g · makes 2 | £2.60 Ocado | £1.30 | Frozen |
1 declared additive Ingredients and ratingsWholemeal Wheat Flour, Water, Salt, Sugar, Yeast, Olive Oil, Wheat Fibre. Seven ingredients and live yeast. The only wholemeal pizza dough we have found on a supermarket shelf, and the same price as the original. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| The Northern Dough Co Protein (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-07 | 2 × 220g · makes 2 | £2.80 Ocado | £1.40 | Frozen |
1 declared additive Ingredients and ratingsWheatflour contains Gluten (with Wheatflour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Wheat Protein, Salt, Wheat Fibre, Sugar, Wheat Gluten, Olive Oil, Yeast. The extra protein is added wheat protein and wheat gluten — not a different flour. 10p a pizza more than the original. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| The Northern Dough Co Beer Crust (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)SM-08 | 2 × 220g · makes 2 | £3.00 Ocado | £1.50 | Frozen |
2 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsFortified Wheat Flour (Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Beer (Barley) (10%), Malt (Barley Malt Flour, Spelt Caramel Malt Flour (Wheat), Malt Extract (Barley Malt, Water), Roasted Rye Malt Flour, Wheat Gluten, Wheat Malt Flour, Wheat Bran, Coarse Spelt Malt (Wheat), Hop Oil, Enzymes), Salt, Wheat Fibre, Sugar, Olive Oil, Yeast. Contains barley, rye and wheat — the only dough on the site that is not wheat-only, and worth knowing about if you are avoiding barley. Beer is 10% of the recipe. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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Finding 002 · Supermarket dough
“Fresh” chilled dough is a preserved, chemically raised product.
Every chilled dough we have read — Pizza Express, ASDA, M&S and Jus-Rol — is raised by raising agents rather than by yeast, adds sugar, and lists deactivated yeast, which contributes flavour but cannot raise anything. Three of the four also carry potassium sorbate as a preservative; Jus-Rol uses ethyl alcohol instead. All four list ascorbic acid as a flour treatment.
The four frozen doughs sitting in the same shop have seven to nine ingredients, live yeast and no preservative at all. Freezing does the job the additives are there to do — and all four come from one producer.
All eight declarations quoted verbatim from the retailers’ own product pages, 6–7 September 2026. We are describing what is printed, not making a health claim: potassium sorbate, calcium phosphates and ascorbic acid are all permitted, common and safe. The point is that two products sold side by side as pizza dough are made in fundamentally different ways, and only one of them tells you so on the front of the pack.
Common questions about supermarket pizza dough
Is supermarket pizza dough any good?
It is cheap, it is everywhere, and it will make a perfectly decent midweek pizza. What it will not do is behave like fermented dough: a chemically raised dough has no gas structure built by yeast over time, so expect a tighter crumb and a flatter rim.
If you want supermarket convenience with fermented dough, buy the frozen one rather than the chilled one.
Why is chilled dough cheaper than delivered dough?
No courier, no insulated packaging, no dry ice, and enormous production runs. Delivered dough carries £5–£6.50 of cold-chain shipping on a single pack, which is most of the difference.
Per pizza: £1.20 to £1.50 from a supermarket, against £1.45 to £2.58 a ball delivered before shipping is added.
Which supermarket pizza dough is cheapest?
Pizza Express Ready Rolled at Tesco, £2.40 for 400g making two pizzas — £1.20 each. ASDA’s own label is £1.25, The Northern Dough Co frozen £1.30, M&S £1.50.