Sales of premium pizzas are up by £20m, as the stores try to replicate the outlandish toppings found in trendy restaurants. But the experts aren’t convinced

In news that will have thin-crust aficionados reaching for the indigestion tablets, the Grocer reports that supermarket pizza sales are up and are now nudging a whopping £1bn a year. This growth has not been achieved by slashing costs and cut-price deals, but by gussying up pizza bases (“wood-fired”, stone-baked), and using upmarket, outlandish toppings. That this is happening while Britain’s high streets are undergoing their own pizza revolution is, surely, no coincidence.

Nationwide, independents such as London’s Pizza Pilgrims, Bristol’s Bertha’s and Newcastle’s Cal’s Own are popularising serious, Neapolitan wood-fired pizzas, as well as the notion that pizza can be a quality product worth a premium. Supermarkets are eagerly exploiting that trend, even if their gourmet pizzas are still most notable for their brittle, cardboardy bases and skinflint toppings. According to analysts Kantar Worldpanel, sales of posher, thin-crust supermarket pizzas are up by £20m, while chilled pizzas now outsell passé frozen by £103m a year.

Richard Carver, owner of Altrincham-based restaurant Honest Crust, is at the forefront of the new wave of nerdy, fastidious pizzaioli. Naturally, he is nonplussed by the supermarkets’ success. “I’m pleased there’s increased interest in pizza, generally. But you can’t compare what we do and supermarket pizza, just because it’s got cheese on it. It’s a fundamentally different product,” says the man who proves his sourdough bases for 48-hours and uses a sauce made from prized San Marzano tomatoes.

If craft pizza has conferred a certain cool on to the mundane margherita, a parallel movement in “dude food” has normalised ridiculous toppings (pulled pork, burgers, fried chicken), a feature that supermarkets are running with, too. So while some are adding hand-torn mozzarella and charred aubergine to their pizzas, others are piling on sweet fig chutney, naga chillies, and jerk chicken. Possibly at the same time.

Carver is all for experimentation. “The first year we did our brussels sprout pizza, people thought it was a joke,” he recalls. “Two years later, we had people coming back for it time and again.” But like the Icelandic president, Guðni Jóhannesson, who reportedly dreams of banning pineapple on pizzas, Carver sees a distinct difference between novelty toppings and the judicious use of seasonal ingredients to expand the pizza repertoire. For instance, wild nettles are a common topping in San Francisco, the global home of credible, experimental pizza. “That’s taking the tradition of Neapolitan pizza on in a well thought-through way.”

“I guess I’m a bit of a pizza snob,” concedes Carver.

If you are going to be a snob about anything, then pizza, which you can buy a world-class example of in most UK cities for £7 to £12, is not a bad one to be picky about. Exceptional pizza is now an affordable, accessible luxury. Why bother with the supermarket version?

There are products that industrial food production has nailed – no one will ever improve on Heinz baked beans by cooking their own. But pizza is not one of them. No fresh dough. No 450C oven. No pizza, frankly. It may be round. It may taste OK (see Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference cherry tomato and mozzarella). But supermarket pizza can only ever be a, literally, pale imitation of the real thing.