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

The Best Way to Freeze Homemade Pizza Dough (and Maintain Deliciousness)
Discover the best method to freeze homemade pizza dough while preserving its delicious flavor and perfect texture. Learn expert tips to ensure your dough stays fresh and ready for your next pizza night.

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Frozen Pizza Dough

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:

Frozen Pizza Dough

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.

Why Freeze Pizza Dough?

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.

How to Freeze Pizza Dough Successfully?

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.

When freezing cold fermented dough balls, always freeze at the point that the cold fermentation is finished, before you’d let them sit at room temperature if you were to bake them that day. The yeast has done its job by this point and it’ll have further time during the thawing process and room temperature rise to finish.

When freezing room temperature fermented dough balls, use your best judgement when you decide to freeze them. For instance, if the dough balls stay at room temperature for 8 hours before baking, freeze them after 4 hours. 12 hours? Freeze after 6. Take into account the additional fermenting that will go on as you thaw (see methods below) and allow them to proof at room temperature before baking.

After your dough balls are frozen, vacuum seal them according to the method you prefer (see the Water Displacement Method video below), date, and put in the freezer for up to 3 months, though they’d probably be ok for up to a year or more.

Video

How to Thaw Frozen Dough Balls

Thawing your dough balls can be done one of two ways. You want to avoid thawing out on the counter at room temperature as it can create an uneven proofing environment as the outside thaws quicker than the dough ball’s core.

Take your frozen dough balls out of their vacuum sealed bag and place them in a proofing container and into the refrigerator for at least 12 hours. This is the best method for when you have time as this allows them to thaw slowly and evenly. In practice dough balls thawed this way also seem to develop a little more flavor than in the following method.

If you don’t have the time for the refrigerator, place the vacuum sealed bag containing the dough ball in a container of cold water for 1 to 2 hours. This will thaw the dough ball through quickly enough to avoid uneven proofing and save you hours compared to using the refrigerator, at the expense of a slightly less fermented flavor.

Frozen Dough Ball in Vacuum Sealed Bag Thawing in a Container of Cold Water (lid used as weight to keep the dough ball submerged)

Regardless of the thawing method you use, the next step is allowing the thawed dough ball to sit at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours to warm some and finish proofing.

Dough balls that were thawed in the refrigerator may have flattened some and those thawed in their bag may have become misshapen when taken out of their bag. If this is the case, absolutely feel free to re-ball them. While not necessary for flatter dough balls, re-balling misshapen ones will ensure you’ll eventually be shaping your pizza from a circle and not trying to make a circle from a blob.

Video

Re-balling can affect the final texture and crumb of your pizza, but usually the differences between re-balling and not re-balling are so slight it’s hard to say which is even better in practice, if at all. However, re-balling will tighten the gluten structure of the dough ball so it is crucial that you wait closer to 4 hours before attempting to shape it.

Shaping a Frozen and Thawed Pizza Dough Ball

When it comes time to shape your now thawed and 3 to 4 hour room temperature proofed dough ball, you can carry on as if it were never frozen! The process is exactly the same as whatever method you do. Same goes for baking - use a steel and get your oven as hot as it’ll go!

Conclusion

Pizza dough ends up being incredibly forgiving when it comes to freezing and can give you a large return on investment in terms of the time it takes to make your own dough. Now you can feel free to double your recipes knowing that second batch can be easily and successfully frozen, waiting for some time far in the future where you get that itch to open a can of tomatoes, grate some cheese, and crank up your oven.

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Robert Brown can be followed on Instagram at “@rubofthekitchen” for plenty of pizza and food related content.