I'm posting this, not because I think it's earth-shatteringly novel. But because up until 5 years ago, I thought making homemade pizza meant starting from scratch each and every time. Figuring out that I could freeze pizza dough got me over the hurdle of "I have to make dinner, again, all from scratch". Just the thought of time-consuming dinner preparations can be overwhelming, at times for me. That's one reason why I usually get a start on dinner prep in the morning, or around lunchtime.
When I make pizza dough, I do a quadruple batch, enough for 4 large pizzas. I mix the ingredients, knead thoroughly, and allow to rest for 10 minutes. I divide the dough into 4 portions. One portion I press out into a large round, on a greased baking sheet for that night's dinner.
The other 3 portions are for freezing. I form each into a ball. I pour about a tablespoon of vegetable oil into the mixing bowl, then turn each ball of dough in the oil, to coat, before placing in individual freezer bags. The oil keeps the dough from sticking to the inside of the freezer bag while its thawing. This frozen dough keeps for at least 6 months (the longest I've ever had a ball of dough in the freezer before using).
To use the frozen pizza dough, I remove a bag of dough from the freezer in the morning, unzip the seal, and allow to thaw on the counter. (I'll also pull a container of pizza/pasta sauce out of the freezer to thaw at this time, too.) By the end of the day, the dough is perfectly thawed. All I need to do is grease a baking sheet and press out into a large circle. I raise this pizza round, slightly, in a barely warmed oven, for about 20 minutes, before adding toppings and baking.
The dough recipe for pizza crust is the same dough I use for French bread, foccacia, stromboli and calzone. It works as a frozen dough for all of these breads. (I posted that recipe here.)
Foccacia makes easy "bread sticks" to go with soup. I press the thawed dough into a rectangle on a greased baking sheet, then add my toppings (which can be as simple a seasonal herbs and kosher salt, or as elaborate as pasta sauce, herbs, oliver slices and vegetables -- basically pizza without the cheese). After the foccacia is baked, I cut it into "sticks", 1-inch by 6-inch strips.
For those of you who already freeze your pizza crust dough, have you ever encountered a problem with keeping it frozen longer than 6 months? Or it failing to rise? Or any other ill-fate? Thanks for your feedback!
And why does freezing pizza dough come up now, you wonder? My two daughters are on spring break this week. Monday, we all rose at the cracking hour of 9 AM - university finals seems to have taken it's toll on all 3 of us :-) (In my defense, even though I didn't have to take the final examinations, I did have to get up at 5:45 AM each day to get my girls to the bus stop for their early morning exams. So a bit of a sleep-in on the first day that we had free, was very welcome.)
The weather forecast was for a gorgeous Monday, with rains returning on Tuesday for the remainder of the week. So we set out to explore the vintage area north of us for the afternoon. But before leaving, I needed to plan out that night's dinner. I pulled pizza dough and sauce out of the freezer to thaw, and off we went.
We had a splendid time popping in and out of vintage shops, enjoying the riverside park watching the fishermen, and sharing some pie. It had been almost a year since our last jaunt to that area, and there was so much new stuff to look at. I spent some of my birthday money from last year. And one of my daughters bought her sister a belated birthday gift. Fun times doing the girlie stuff we enjoy!
So, there's the logical explanation of why I'd post about freezing pizza dough today!
