Readers’ Question: Freezing Pizza Dough

Dear Frugal Upstate:

Photo by Renee Silverman

I’m am sure you have posted about this somewhere but I can’t remember!

Can you make the Pizza Hut Crust Clone recipe ahead of time or do you make it and par-bake it right away. I’m just wondering if it can be frozen or refrigerated?? 

Thanks!!! and love your site!
Kristie

Well Kristie, most of the time I just make the crust up as I am going to use it–since I work from a home office it’s easy to just throw it together around 3pm and have it ready for suppertime!  I’ve even gone so far as to make up ahead of time 4 or 5 ziplock bags full of all the dry ingredients (sans yeast) and then stick a note inside with what wet ingredients need to be added so that it’s super easy!

(note: this is sort of like the method I show at the bottom of my “Weekly Bread Baking Method” post)

There are times that I have made the crust and par baked it (350 for about 8 minutes) then either held on to it until later that day or frozen it parbaked. Usually I just do that by sticking it on a cookie sheet and layering wax paper in between the crusts.  When they are frozen I lightly wrap in saran wrap and return them to the freezer.  Then I try to use them up fairly soon.

I have frozen the recipe as a big lump of dough-and while the quality was ok, I preferred it either fresh or par baked. Also I have a hard time getting the timing right for thawing a big lump o dough-either it was done too soon & started rising again or it was still partially frozen when I wanted to use it.  With the parbaked and then frozen crust I could just put all the toppings on it frozen and throw it in the oven like that, adding just a few minutes.

I’m all about easy.  🙂

I have on a few occasions just refridgerated it for a day-punching it down once or twice to make sure it didn’t overflow the container.  I think that it loses some of the texture that way-the baking soda has already done it’s thing hours ago. Again it’s fine-I’m sure your family will still eat it, but not my favorite way.

I’ll be honest-with things like this you can probably get it to work no matter what you do-but the quality will be affected a bit.  Personally, even with my least favorite of the methods, once you top it with sauce, a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, and then the regular mozzarella and toppings you are still beating the pants off a really cheapo frozen pizza.

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