Monday, September 19, 2011

Kitchen Tip: Freezing Pizza Dough

Yesterday, I shared one of the items in our new chest freezer is homemade pizza dough.  On facebook, a Finding Joy in My Kitchen reader suggested I share what pizza dough recipe I use, and how I go about freezing that dough. 

So – here’s the tip you asked for!

Pizza Dough Recipes

I have two go-to pizza dough recipes.  Both freeze wonderfully – we use them interchangeably for grilled pizzas, pizza pockets, pizza-stuffed pretzels, pizzas, stromboli and calzones.  They both make 2 medium pizzas.  The best part – both of these recipes are No-Rise Pizza Dough!

The first recipe is from Tyler Florence  and makes 2 medium pizzas.  His recipe uses yeast, water, sea salt, olive oil, honey, bread and white whole wheat flour. 

The second recipe is from Amy at The Finer Things in Life . Her recipe is quite similar, but uses 100% wheat in a combination of whole wheat & white whole wheat flours. 

The directions for making the dough can be found here {for Florence’s dough} and here {for Amy’s dough}. 

 

Freezing Pizza Dough – Directions

In three easy steps, you can have frozen pizza dough in your freezer:

(1) Make the pizza dough. {No need to rise, b/c these recipes are for no-rise dough!}
(2) Wrap the dough in plastic wrap & place in a Ziploc bag
(3) Place the dough into the freezer.

Thawing Pizza Dough – Directions

Your dough will likely keep in your freezer for a couple of weeks, or longer if you don’t get freezer burn often on your foods.  If you have pizza on your menu on say, Friday night here’s how you can make it happen:

(1) Friday morning, take the dough out of the freezer & out of the bag.
(2) Leave the dough in the plastic wrap & place the dough on a plate.
(3) Set the plate in the fridge and allow the dough to thaw while you are working during the day.
(4) At dinner time, take the dough out, shape into the pizza crust, top & bake!

We LOVE having pizza dough in the freezer.  It makes for a quick dinner in a snap.  Enjoy!

Linked to: Kitchen Tip Tuesday, Works for Me Wednesday

10 comments:

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  2. Thanks for your tips! I have done this a couple of times and love how easy it makes pizza with a homemade crust. I am on the lookout for whole wheat crust recipes, so I will save these and give them a try!

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  3. I also freeze my pizza dough. However, I have learned to let it rise slightly because otherwise, it rises before it freezes, and leaks out of the plastic wrap and sometime the foil. I prefer to put mine out on the counter when I leave for work in the morning because it's easier to work with at room temperature. I have a yummy beer battered pizza crust recipe, too. It works great for grilling.

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  4. Thanks for the tip about rising, Carrie H! Both of these recipes, however, are no-rise recipes -- so that is how I can freeze them right away.

    I bet that beer battered crust is great.

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  5. Neat! Thanks for posting this. I've seen people mention keeping dough in their freezer, but I've never seen it spelled out on how to do it exactly. It's obviously pretty straightforward from what you've said, but I didn't want to ruin homemade dough just attempting to figure out the process on my own!

    I'm a SAHM so I usually don't have any trouble just whipping up some pizza dough a few hours before dinner and then allowing it to rise, but it would be nice to have a back up in the freezer. I also wonder about maybe par-baking my own homemade pizza to pull out and pop in the oven like a frozen pizza? I might have to experiment a little with that one, but it would be so nice to have a homemade frozen pizza ready to pop in the oven!

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  6. Awesome tips! I really need to start freezing my dough.

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  7. Thanks for the tip. I have always wanted to try this as a time saver, but I just wasn't sure how the thawing part worked. I am afraid I would either have half frozen dough or an inflated balloon when it was dinner time. I think I will be brave enough to try thawing in the fridge . . .

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  8. Thanks for the tip. We eat homemade pizza quite often and I have been wanting to make ahead dough to freeze, but was not sure about how to go about it.

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  9. Thanks!! I plan on trying this. I normally just make my dough the day of, but it would be really helpful to have some ready in the freezer on those days that get a little busy! :)

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  10. Thanks for sharing these step by step tips. I've wanted to freeze dough before but wasn't sure exactly what to put it in or when to take it out.

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Thanks for stopping by! I'd love to hear from you; especially how you're finding JOY in your kitchen.

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