Discover about frozen dough in bread making. Sometimes you may produce more than enough dough. Situation may arise due to:
1. You had kneaded more than your oven can fit.
2. You are loss of energy to shape or bake several batches.
3. You receive an important call and you need to leave the house.
4. You noticed that your baking pan is not big enough to fit in all your dough.

Whatever the situation is, you do have extra dough that you wouldn’t want to bake now. So, here’s your solution to your extra dough – freeze it. After your first proofing, knock down the dough and store it in a plastic bag or container and place it in your freezer.

Food stored at freezer compartment can last up to several months. Bread dough, however, can be stored preferably no more than two weeks. At frozen temperature, yeast will stop being active and your dough will not proof at all. The longer you store your frozen dough, the weaker the yeast will become. Hence, you may need a longer second proofing. As a rule of thumb, proof until your dough is double in size.

It will take about two hours to thaw a frozen dough in room temperature. Take the temperature of the dough while thawing. Once it starts to soften, you may divide it into two to speed up the thawing process.

From freezer

After 2 hours

Ready for shaping

Ready for baking

Now that you know this technique works, you can deliberately knead a giant size dough. With Kenwood Major Premier that can knead up to 2.4kg, cut out the portion you need and store the remainder in the freezer compartment for future use. At least, this will save your time from weighing ingredients and kneading my next batch. Find out more about my bread baking class (Singapore) or check out other recipes!