How To Freeze Pizza Dough

Making pizza dough at home to make pizza crusts is very easy. You have all the control over the ingredients and you can make pizzas with your favorite toppings. The best part is you can plan ahead and make the pizza dough in advance and freeze it until you are ready to use it.

If you are wondering how to freeze pizza dough with yeast, you can make a large batch of pizza dough or if you have any leftover pizza dough, you can freeze it in ziplock bags or freezer bags.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Substitutions
• Variations
• Equipment
• Storage
• Top tip
• Related
• Pairing
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

Ingredients

Making homemade pizza dough requires very few ingredients. You will need all-purpose flour, oil, water, salt, sugar, and instant yeast.

Instead of all-purpose flour, you can also use bread flour. Instead of instant yeast, you can use active dry yeast. You will have to activate it in lukewarm water and a little bit of sugar. If you are making the dough in a bread machine then you can use bread machine yeast.

Instructions

Pizza dough can be made in a bread machine or in a stand mixer. You can find a detailed post on how to make pizza dough in a bread machine. If you are planning to freeze pizza dough, it is a good idea to make a bigger batch in the stand mixer.

In a stand mixer bowl, add all the wet and dry ingredients and with the help of the dough hook attachment, knead the dough well for about 12 minutes on level 2.

The dough will start mixing and form into a ball shape. Depending on whether the dough ball is too dry or too wet, you can add a teaspoon of flour or water at a time until it all binds well.

When the dough pulls off from all the sides of the bowl, is soft, and attaches to the dough hook, it is done. Remove the dough from the hook and shape it into a smooth ball and transfer it back to the bowl.

Cover the bowl with a lid and let it sit in a warm place until the dough rises to double the volume. This can take anywhere between 45 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the weather and the ambient temperature.

You can also proof the dough in the Instant Pot. Once the pizza dough rises to double in volume, punch the dough and transfer it onto a lightly floured surface. Now divide the dough into smaller portions.

For this recipe, you can divide it into 4 parts to make 4 personal size pizzas. If you like to make larger pizzas, you can divide it into 2 or 3 equal parts. If you like to bake pizzas in an air fryer then you can divide it into 6 or 8 parts.

Shape them into dough balls and place them onto a tray. Once all the pizza dough balls have been shaped, cover the tray with a cling wrap and transfer the tray into the freezer.

After about 4-5 hours, once the pizza dough is frozen, you can transfer it into a ziplock bag or an airtight container. When you want to make pizzas, take out as many frozen dough balls as you want and place them in a tray or sheet pan keeping them covered.

The dough will thaw in about 1-2 hours and be ready to make delicious homemade pizzas with your favorite pizza toppings, pizza sauce, cheese, and herbs. You can use the dough in a similar way as fresh dough. You can bake pizzas in the oven until the cheese browns and the crust is well cooked.

You can also place the pizza dough in a bowl in the refrigerator overnight, ensuring it is loosely covered. If you are in a hurry, you can also use the defrost setting in the microwave.

Substitutions

To make a pizza dough recipe, you can use all-purpose flour or bread flour.

Instead of instant yeast, you can use active dry yeast. First, you will have to activate the yeast in warm water with some sugar. If you are using a bread machine to make the dough then you can use a bread machine as well.

Variations

You can apply the same technique to freeze the dough for bread, naan, dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, or yeast bread. For the bread that requires more than one rise, you will have to thaw the dough and then shape it and allow it to rise before you bake it.

For single-rise bread like pizza, naan, and pita bread, you can thaw the dough and then roll it to make your recipe. There is no need to wait for the final rise.

Equipment

Pizza dough can be made either in the bread machine or in the KitchenAid stand mixer. When you plan to freeze the dough, it is best to make a bigger batch of dough and a stand mixer comes in very handy for that.

Initially, to freeze the pizza dough, you will have to place the portioned dough balls in a baking tray and cover them with plastic wrap. Once they freeze well, you can then transfer them to an airtight container or into ziplock bags.

Storage

Pizza dough can be frozen for about 3 months in ziplock bags or freezer bags. If you want to freeze pizza dough without plastic then you can put the dough balls in a tray and cover it with another tray and freeze it. Once the dough balls freeze, you can transfer them to airtight freezer-safe containers free from plastic.

When you want to use the frozen pizza dough balls, leave them in the fridge overnight or at room temperature for a few hours before using them. You can leave it covered loosely with a cling wrap while thawing so it does not dry up.

Related

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Pairing

These are my favorite dishes to serve with homemade pizza:

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