An Irish business has launched frozen pizza kits that it claims will enable consumers to make restaurant-quality pizza at home.

County Cork-based O’Keeffe’s Bakery unveiled its frozen DIY Pizza Kits range at London’s International Food Expo this week.

The company, which has supplied handmade and par-baked frozen bread for 20 years, has invested €1m in R&D to develop a new process that freezes dough without reducing the effectiveness of the active yeast, it said.

The process could transform the commercial and in-store bakery sector, it claimed. The products had scored highly for baking quality, inventory control, waste reduction, storage space requirement and production consistency during six months of product testing through in-store bakeries, it added.

The new dough is making its debut in two frozen pizza kits, one aimed at kids and containing the ingredients for two seven-inch pizzas and one that makes a 10-inch pizza. Each kit contains dough, pizza sauce, mozzarella and a small sachet of flour for rolling the dough. The full DIY range will also include kits for making garlic bread and scones.

O’Keeffe’s said the new range would bring innovation to the frozen pizza category, which has grown 1.4% by volume in an overall pizza market up 3.3% [Kantar Worldpanel 52w/e 25 November 2012].

The company said the concept had scored well with focus groups, and is aiming the kids’ pizza kits at ABC1 mums aged 25 to 45 years old.

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