Reader’s Question: Can You Freeze Bread Dough

Photo by Mary Muses

Hello Jenn,

I have to say I am loving your site.  You have given me great inspiration.  I first saw you on You Tube (the homemade laundry soap) and am hoping you will do more videos .  But that isn’t my question.  I am just now starting to do a lot in my bread machine, but want to start freezing my dough.  How do you freeze yours?  What have you done that has worked and what hasn’t worked?  Any tips would help.

Thanks.

Kim

Kim,

First of all thank you for your kind words! It’s always so nice to hear when someone finds Frugal Upstate helpful.  I will be doing more videos in the future-I’ve got several baking ones that have gone up recently, and I have plans in the New Year to do more instructional tutorials on various topics.

But back to your actual question!

Long story short-the only dough I freeze is pizza dough.  You probably couldn’t even consider it “dough” anymore, I roll it out and par bake it for 8 minutes in a 350 oven, the freeze it on a cookie sheet or cooling rack in my deep freeze.  Once it is solid, I take it out again and wrap it in plastic.  To use I pull out the frozen crust, don’t bother defrosting it, top it as I normally would and bake.  I probably add another 3-5 minutes on to the baking time when using a frozen crust-but just keep and eye on it the first time and see what you think!

According to my research, you can freeze pizza dough.  Simply wrap it in plastic wrap, then place that in a freezer bag.  When you want to use take it out and let it thaw completely at room temperature then roll out and go.

The information I read on bread dough for loaves was varied.  Some folks reported that their dough never really rose after it was frozen-the yeast never seemed to recover.  Others said that if you allowed the dough to thaw fully in the fridge and then take it out and give it time to rise on top of that it worked fine.  Never having tried it I can’t say with complete certainty which method, if any, will work-but you may just want to try it with one loaf and see what results you get!  If you do, I’d love to report your findings here!

If you are using a bread machine and just want to make baking bread easier-maybe instead of freezing you should consider making up bread “kits” to speed up the process.  Take your favorite bread recipe and measure all the dry ingredients (minus the yeast unless you plan on storing the entire thing in the fridge) into a zippered baggie or seal-able plastic container.  Label it.  When you want to bake bread, all you would need to do is measure your water & oil/butter into the bread hopper, pour in the bag of dry ingredients, and toss the yeast on top.  Hit go.  1 1/2 hours later the dough is done, then you can rise for 30-40 minutes and then bake.

Good luck in all your bread baking endeavors!  Once you’ve gotten your family spoiled with delicious homemade bread, you’ll never hear the end of it if you buy store bough.

Jenn

PS-have any of you tried freezing dough?  Kim and I would love to hear your experiences.

Do you have a Reader’s Question? I’d love to hear it!