The Best Way to Freeze Homemade Pizza Dough (and Maintain Deliciousness)

Freezing has always been a convenient method of extending the life of food. Whether it’s raw chicken breasts you forgot to get around to making for a weeknight dinner or leftovers that would otherwise go to waste, the ability to freeze food saves you money and time when you need a quick meal.

Unfortunately, freezing can also be a detriment to food. Many foods that go from fresh to frozen and then are thawed are never quite the same due to the cell walls bursting during the freezing process. This additional moisture creates a softer product that is less enjoyable than when it was fresh.

When talking about pizza dough, this slight addition of moisture isn’t as detrimental, but it is necessary to have a proper understanding of when in the process to freeze the dough. Fermentation must be taken into account when freezing pizza dough as it will make or break your final rise and resulting pizza dough.

Below you’ll find some “best practices” for successfully freezing your pizza dough, ensuring you’ll have a healthy stock of dough balls always ready to go.

This Pizza was Made From a 1 Month Old Frozen Dough Ball:

Freezing has always been a convenient method of extending the life of food. Whether it’s raw chicken breasts you forgot to get around to making for a weeknight dinner or leftovers that would otherwise go to waste, the ability to freeze food saves you money and time when you need a quick meal.

Unfortunately, freezing can also be a detriment to food. Many foods that go from fresh to frozen and then are thawed are never quite the same due to the cell walls bursting during the freezing process. This additional moisture creates a softer product that is less enjoyable than when it was fresh.

When talking about pizza dough, this slight addition of moisture isn’t as detrimental, but it is necessary to have a proper understanding of when in the process to freeze the dough. Fermentation must be taken into account when freezing pizza dough as it will make or break your final rise and resulting pizza dough.

Below you’ll find some “best practices” for successfully freezing your pizza dough, ensuring you’ll have a healthy stock of dough balls always ready to go.

Pizza dough is generally made over the course of 24 hours, or longer. With so much pre-planning involved, why would you ever need frozen dough balls “on deck”? You may never need to worry about having a freezer with 4-6 dough balls “chilling,” waiting for a pizza night that may never come. Regardless, everyone values their time differently and you may begin to appreciate not having to get the stand mixer out when you’re feeling like pizza for the next day’s dinner.

Doubling your pizza dough recipe and freezing half the dough balls immediately saves you an additional go around with your stand mixer or your hands (and arms!) from getting dirty. Last minute plans with friends, but not enough time to make a properly fermented pizza dough? No worries if you have some dough balls locked away in your ice chest.

Perhaps the best argument for freezing your pizza dough, apart from how easy it is to do so, is how well it freezes and the indistinguishable difference in the baked pizza compared to pizzas made with never frozen dough balls.

Successfully freezing pizza dough is knowing when in the process to freeze it. Do it too soon and you won’t get enough yeast activity. Do it too late and you’ll have an overproofed and unwieldy dough ball to shape from. In both cases if you’re experienced enough, a pizza could be salvaged, but not a very enjoyable one at that.

To begin with, always freeze your dough when they are already shaped into dough balls. Freezing and thawing from bulk to later shape into balls is not as convenient as having individual balls to work with. When you freeze and thaw dough balls you’re saving time compared to doing it from bulk and it is easier to manage the thawing and final fermentation when they are already individually balled.

Next is whether you are cold fermenting your dough balls or doing them at room temperature. It is a touch easier to freeze cold fermented dough balls as they are colder and firmer - transferring dough balls into containers or bags is less awkward and cold dough freezes quicker than a room temperature fermented dough ball, meaning additional and uneven fermenting won’t be as much of an issue.