Pizza dough is one of the most versatile things you can keep in your freezer. If you’re wondering what’s the process of freezing pizza dough then this article is what you’re looking for. Read on!
Pizza is an Italian dish that’s become a real all-American favorite. From toppings to sauce to crust, most every restaurant and every family puts their own spin on the pie that’s great for dinner, party, lunch or even breakfast.
To get this favorite food ready relatively quickly and in reasonable quantity to cover a get together at the house, a church function or school fund raiser, it helps to have plenty of dough on hand. And that’s why we freeze pizza dough.
How to freeze pizza dough.
The trick to successful freezing of pizza dough is really no trick at all, but rather depends on a few common sense steps:
- Use your usual tried and true recipe for dough. If this is your first time making it, don’t be intimidated. It’s easy as can be, and there are plenty of recipes out there in cook books and online, too.
- Decide how many dough balls you would like to freeze. Many cooks use recipes that make two 9 x 13″ cookie sheets worth of pizza. Others use recipes large enough for four 8″ round pizzas. Either way works well because you can use one dough ball for pizza that evening and freeze the other ones. For long term freezing, try to think how many times a month your family eats pizza and double or triple up on the recipe.
- After you have mixed the dough, let it proof or rise for at least 1 to 2 hours. Punch it down, and allow the dough you are using immediately to rise again before doing the final roll out and addition of sauce and toppings.
- Do not let the dough you are freezing to rise for the second time. Instead, prepare if for the freezer by shaping it into single-pie balls. Dust each ball with flour or corn meal, and place each into a separate Zip-loc bag. (Some people prefer lightly oiling the dough.)
- Place the bagged dough in the freezer. Storage time can be as long as 3 months, If stored for longer periods of time, you may find ice crystals on the dough.
Image used under Creative Commons from sunny mama
Thawing and using pizza dough.
When the day comes to use the frozen dough, simply take the right number of dough balls from the freezer, remove from the plastic zipper bags and let them thaw on the kitchen counter at room temperature. Allow at least 2 hours for this. If you want to pull the dough out in the morning, letting it thaw while you are at work, place the dough in the refrigerator and then take it out for a 30 minute warm up when you get home.
Dust the dough with flour. For a nice thick crust, be sure to punch down the thawed dough and allow to rise for 30 minutes. Skip this step for a thinner crust. Roll out the crust, and add sauce and toppings.
Enjoy your pizza!
You will find that having frozen dough on hand will allow you to enjoy pizza at home more frequently. Also, the price of at-home versus pizza parlor price makes your prep time well worth it.
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