Until Saturday, I have been immune to the charms of the "take and bake" pizza concept. I mean, pizza is one of the few foods that can consistantly arrive on your doorstep, already cooked and ready to eat. "Take and bake" seems to defy all pizza logic, in that you have to go and get it, and then, once you've gotten it, you have to cook it.

I've never tried Papa Murphy's, because driving to the nearest Papa Murphy's involves me driving past at least half a dozen other local restaurants, all of which would let me buy food that's already cooked.

But a few months ago, as part of the general explosion of restaurants in my vicinity this year, the Homemade Pizza Company dropped an outlet in Calhoun Commons, in the same plaza where my Whole Foods and Chipotle live. And this weekend, the stars aligned in such a way as to make trying it out a reasonable choice. I won't be back often, but I'll be back.

Now, I don't know how Papa Murphy's works, but I'd always kind of assumed that most of the pizzas were there sitting in boxes when you walked in, and you grabbed one and paid and left. They may, however, make pizzas to order. Homemade definitely does. The place has a serious minimalist aesthetic, all white paint and stainless steel. It's a commercial kitchen with a menu board and two cash registers.

Anyway, you walk in, you order your pizza, they make it in front of you, wrap it in plastic, and you walk out, about ten minutes after you walked in. Then you go home, set the oven to 425, and about fifteen minutes later you have to cut a pizza into slices.

This is something that completely slipped my mind when it comes to the take and bake concept. I'd have to cut through my own pizza. Now, I have a pizza cutter. But a pizza cutter is just one part of the cutting through pizza equation. The other part is a solid surface big enough to set a cooked 14" pizza on while you slice through it, and that, in my apartment, is a bit of a challenge.

Beyond that, the process was fairly simple. The pizza comes on parchment paper, then on a cardboard round, which is all wrapped in plastic. You remove the plastic, slide the pizza onto the oven rack using the cardboard, pull the cardboard, and the pizza bakes on the parchment, which, because parchment paper doesn't hold heat at all, you can then use to yank the pizza back onto the cardboard when it's done.

The menu is Generic Foodie, the usual array of well-matched flavors using good-quality ingredients you find all over the place these days. Not to denigrate it, because it makes me very happy that things like caramelized onions and high-quality sausage are commonplace, but there's nothing too terribly shocking about the options unless all you've eaten for the past decade is Pizza Hut.

Speaking of toppings, unless you're a lot richer than I am, a la carte is a killer. Toppings are about two bucks a piece to add, and many of them count as two toppings. Careless ordering could leave you with a $25 pizza. Best to go with their extensive list of prearranged selections, which generally have 3-5 toppings and sell for $5 more than a plain pizza the same size. We left with a Spinach Pie (spinach, Feta, sundried tomatoes, roasted garlic, pine nuts, oregano, olive oil, no red sauce) and a Georgia (chicken sausage, Poblano peppers, ricotta).

And I have to say, even though the vagaries of my oven led to a somewhat underdone crust, even after going five minutes past the recommended baking time, the result is a damn fine pizza. Really nice dough, really nice cheese, really nice toppings. A lot of balance, and very little grease. A proper oven would probably make it absolutely fucking fantastic. It was even good microwaved the next day. Although I will admit I did not notice the telltale crunch of any pine nuts on the Spinach Pie. They may have been sparse, or small, or included in some other way.

Also, thinly sliced rings of raw poblano pepper as a pizza topping is genius, and I am so going to steal that idea and use it somehow.

One other thing I'm considering for the future - they sell a plain, 14" round of pizza dough with red sauce and cheese on it for $13. Which is a bit pricey, but it does eliminate all the pain in the ass parts of making pizza. One could, if one were so inspired, purchase one of these basic rounds, then arrange toppings from one's own gourmet pantry to make their own pizza creation on the cheap.

So overall, it's a little bit expensive, and a little bit of hassle, but the end results are good enough that it shifts from the "never" list over to the "occasional" list. Mainly because it's close. Move it another couple of miles away, and it'd probably drop off my radar. That said, it's significantly better than, say, Papa John's, for maybe 15% more money and infinitely more effort. Which sounds worse than it is, because Papa John's requires zero effort.