May 31, 2015 - 3:21pm
Freezing Dough?
I have a batch bulk fermenting and was thinking about freezing half for baking later in the week.
Since its now spring in New England and we don't refrigerate (air condition) the house unless its unbearably hot, the bread is molding faster. I'm splitting the loaves and freezing half a baked loaf for a day or three but its never as nice as fresh baked.
I was thinking of freezing half after bulk ferment, then defrost it in the fridge, ferment it again and bake.
Thoughts/Experience?
Wendy
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I have never tried that. My strategy as it gets hot if I am firing up the oven is to bake more and freeze the baked loaves. Letting those thaw and reheat in a small oven give me about the same results without multiple days of the big oven on. Just a thought, I know it doesn't address your question exactly - sorry.
they seem to harden faster. Before I started baking all of our bread, I used to buy it and freeze it and everything was fine. Then I spoiled myself with baking fresh bread and everything else, even the fresh baked frozen bread can't compare....silly huh? Its good toasted but I just don't care for its taste fresh from the freezer.
I'll report on how it goes in a couple of days.
I get that. I think there are a lot of factors involved. How you wrap, what kind of freezer, what is in the freezer, etc. I was just surprised at how good it came. out. So many stores sell loaves that are either frozen dough or par-baked it seems there is a large spectrum of options to try.
I was just talking today about the home bakes have to be adjusted for the weather. Seems like suddenly a quick run upstairs and on return thedough has overrun everything. Good luck!
Some dough can be frozen and still works fine. In my experience it is trial abd error. Pizza dough works fine as do some other yeast doughs. I have not had much luck with sourdough dough. For bread you need to tightly wrap it on Saran and then an outer bag. This keeps moisture on as the bread freezes. I have had good experience with both yeast and sourdough breads this way.
For both baked bread and dough.
For the baked bread, make sure it's well wrapped and in an airtight container. Some fridges have built in dehumidifiers (typically the frost-free ones) and that'll induce "freezer burn" relatively rapidly. I often suggest to people to pre-slice the bread they're going to freeze too, then they can just take it out as needed.
Dough should be fine - wrapped as above. It will all depend on the yeasts ability to recover afterwards. You might find you need to use more yeast to get it to reliably defrost and prove. I might even suggest pre-shaping the dough, then all you need to do is get it out the night before, let it defrost and rise overnight then into the oven first thing. I've seen breads and things like croissants being sold that way here.
Or you could bake sourdough - I've never seen any mould on mine, but it's not as humid here in old England as in new England (I lived in MA for a while ~20 years back!)
-Gordon