Freezing Bread Dough: Instructions With Tips and Hints

Bread Dough: Adjust the recipe before freezing

You’ll need to make a few small changes to your bread dough recipe. This is the only way to ensure that the dough rises properly after you have thawed it again. You can use and adapt any bread dough recipe.

• Experiment: You have to change the amount of flour and yeast in each recipe. However, no general information can be given here, so you will have to experiment with how much less or more yeast and flour you need when you freeze the dough.
• Flour: If you freeze the bread dough, the cold weakens the gluten contained in the flour. You can counteract this by using high-protein flour instead of regular flour. Wholemeal flour, rye flour, and durum wheat flour are suitable for this. The high protein content means that the gases are retained even when the dough is frozen. So he can get up again later.
• Yeast: If yeast is stored too cold, it will die. Therefore, use twice the amount of yeast as specified in the recipe. You can ask for slow-rising yeast at the grocery store. This can be used in normal amounts.
• Proving: In all cases, allow the dough to rise for at least 45 minutes before freezing. Then form the desired shape and then freeze the dough. If the recipe calls for the dough to rise twice, do it the second time after defrosting. The time of 45 minutes should also be selected for this. Again, this may differ from the recipe.
• Freezing: If you have formed baguettes or rolls from the dough, make sure that they do not freeze together. So leave space between the individual pieces.

How to proceed with freezing and thawing

After making and shaping the bread dough, place it unwrapped in the freezer for 1-2 hours. This will ensure that it doesn’t open any further.

• Then take the dough out of the freezer and pack it in freezer bags or kitchen foil.
• Write the date on the pouch or foil.
• Place the wrapped dough back in the freezer. It stays here for up to six months. However, since it will develop freezer burn at the maximum time, it is advisable to thaw it and use it up after four months at the latest.
• Thaw the dough, take it out of the freezer, and let it thaw at room temperature for an hour. Now you can remove the foil.
• Place the dough on parchment paper and let it thaw for another three hours. Either you bake the dough now or you let it rise for 45 minutes (maximum 38 degrees) because the recipe calls for it.
• Bake the bread dough as directed in the recipe. Be prepared for the dough to take about ten minutes longer to bake.