A beautiful pie can lose some of its magic when the crust doesn’t deliver. You can have the sweetest apple filling or the smoothest pumpkin custard, but if the pastry turns tough, dry, or disappointingly bland, something feels missing.
Luckily, homemade dough isn’t your only option. In August 2025, Emily Hunt of Tasting Table published a blind comparison of nine store-bought pie crusts, judging their flavor, texture, structure, and baking performance.
She transformed the crusts into miniature apple tarts for a consistent comparison, though reshaping frozen shells wasn’t their intended preparation method.
Here are eight of those products, ranked from lowest to highest in Hunt’s test, excluding Kroger’s refrigerated crust. The results reveal some surprising differences between familiar brands.
Pillsbury Frozen Deep-Dish Pie Crust
Pillsbury might be a familiar name in the baking aisle, but its frozen deep-dish crust performed poorly.
Hunt ranked it last of the nine products, describing a thin pastry that struggled to hold its shape after being cut and reshaped into miniature tarts.
The flavor wasn’t a winner either. She detected an almond-like, toasted quality that didn’t appeal to her.
Interestingly, Simply Recipes’ Myo Quinn separately reported considerable cracking when testing Pillsbury’s frozen deep-dish crust using a different baking method.
That doesn’t mean every package will perform poorly. Still, in Hunt’s particular comparison, this frozen option struggled to compete with the rest.
Whole Foods Market 365 Pie Crust
A sturdy crust sounds promising until that sturdiness becomes part of the problem.
Whole Foods’ 365 pie crust earned seventh place in this eight-product selection. Hunt praised its ability to hold its shape and noted that it released easily from the muffin tin.
However, that impressive structure came with a drawback. The pastry was noticeably thick, dense, and chewy, without the delicate flakiness Hunt preferred. Its flavor also failed to make a memorable impression.
For bakers who appreciate a substantial crust, those characteristics might not be dealbreakers.
But if you’re chasing tender layers that crumble gently beneath your fork, Hunt’s findings suggest this wouldn’t be her first choice.
Marie Callender’s Pastry Pie Shells
Some pie crusts divide opinion, and Marie Callender’s provides a perfect example.
In Hunt’s comparison, the frozen pastry shells baked evenly and developed an appealing golden-brown color. They also maintained their structure without much trouble.
The trade-off was tenderness. Hunt preferred the softer, more delicate texture of several higher-ranked competitors, although she didn’t consider Marie Callender’s a bad purchase.
Interestingly, The Kitchn selected Marie Callender’s as its favorite frozen pie crust in a separate comparison. According to the manufacturer, each package contains two deep-dish pastry shells.
Different testing methods clearly produce different favorites, making this sixth-place finish a personal judgment rather than a universal verdict.
Kroger Frozen Pie Crust
Sometimes, a supermarket’s own brand delivers an unexpectedly respectable performance.
Kroger’s frozen pie crust finished fifth in this selection, performing considerably better than its refrigerated counterpart in Hunt’s original nine-product test. The frozen crust developed an attractive golden color and held together nicely after baking.
Its interior was pleasantly flaky without becoming overly crumbly, creating the kind of balance a pie baker appreciates.
Flavor was the main limitation. Hunt found it less distinctive than the higher-ranked choices, even though its structure impressed her.
It’s worth remembering that Kroger sells different pie crust products, including traditional and deep-dish varieties.
These findings concern Hunt’s tested frozen crust, not every version carrying the Kroger name.
Great Value Frozen Pie Crust
Walmart’s Great Value brand entered the top four with a crust that looked particularly appealing after baking.
Hunt admired its rich golden exterior and tender, slightly crumbly texture. She also described a buttery-tasting flavor that gave the pastry additional character.
There was one small catch. The crust leaned toward dryness, although Hunt thought that quality worked reasonably well with the moist apple filling used in her test.
That distinction matters because the same pastry could behave differently with another filling.
Great Value’s fourth-place result suggests that a store-brand crust can compete effectively with recognizable baking names.
For Hunt’s apple tarts, its combination of browning, tenderness, and flavor made a favorable impression.
Signature Select Pie Crust
A little extra flavor can make an ordinary pastry stand out. Signature Select’s crust demonstrated exactly that.
Finishing third, this supermarket-brand option delivered the strongest nutty-tasting notes Hunt encountered during her comparison.
The pastry also browned evenly, remained sturdy after baking, and offered a tender texture.
However, it wasn’t particularly flaky, partly because Hunt found the crust relatively thin. Its pronounced flavor became both its greatest strength and the reason she hesitated to rank it higher.
Someone seeking a bolder-tasting pastry might appreciate that quality more than a baker who prefers a subtle crust.
In this test, Signature Select proved that flavor can matter just as much as delicate layers.
Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crust
What a difference a different product can make! While Pillsbury’s frozen deep-dish crust landed at the bottom, its refrigerated version climbed to second place.
Hunt praised its thick yet tender texture, noticeable flakiness, and balanced, buttery flavor. The official Pillsbury product page lists two crusts in a 14.1-ounce package, designed to be unrolled into a 9-inch pie plate.
The published ingredient list lists lard and hydrogenated lard, not butter, showing that a buttery flavor description doesn’t necessarily match the actual ingredients.
Simply Recipes’ Quinn also ranked this refrigerated product second in her separate comparison.
Its main disadvantage against Hunt’s winner was convenience: the dough still needed to be unrolled and shaped.
Wholly Wholesome Traditional Organic Pie Shells
And the winner is a crust that managed to combine tenderness, structure, and convenience.
Wholly Wholesome’s Traditional Organic pie shells claimed first place in Hunt’s blind comparison. She praised their flaky, crumbly texture, noting that the pastry remained tender without becoming excessively dry.
Better still, it held its shape during baking and arrived preformed with attractive crimped edges.
According to Wholly Wholesome’s official product information, the package contains two 9-inch shells made with ingredients including organic wheat flour and organic palm-fruit shortening.
Although Hunt described the flavor as buttery, the listed shortening isn’t butter.
For this particular test, the winning combination was simple: pleasing flavor, delicate texture, dependable structure, and less preparation work.
The final slice
These results offer useful guidance, but pie-crust rankings aren’t written in stone.
Hunt’s comparison used miniature apple tarts, while other reviewers baked empty shells or used different methods. Even the middle-ranked products performed closely enough that personal preference influenced their placement.
One important omission: Trader Joe’s wasn’t included in Hunt’s test, although separate comparisons from Simply Recipes and Epicurious selected it as a favorite.
The takeaway? A higher ranking can point you toward a promising crust, but the best choice still depends on your filling, preferred texture, and preparation method.
Whether you love delicate flakes or a sturdy, golden pastry, there’s something satisfying about finding a shortcut that makes your homemade pie feel a little more special.
