Freezing uncooked bread dough

[kayo3840]

I like to bake french bread and sour dough bread. Has anyone frozen the dough - if so, could you give me some tips. Do you complete the kneeding process and forming the loaves before freezing. How long can you keep dough frozen?

Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
Kayo

[tralfaz]

I've done it a few times, but only with bread in loaf pans. I'll treat it the same as regular bread up to forming the loaves (I usually kneed, punch down, then form loaves for the second rise) and then freeze. Thawing is tricky though. you don't know how long it will take to thaw, and then it needs to rise. I'm in a cool climate so it takes me 4-8 hours just to thaw, another 1-2 hours to rise. Me, I usually let it thaw overnight when I have a free day following, it's hard to plan when I'll rise. You could also let them thaw in your fridge in a bag. I'll take longer, but you can control when they rise.


Another solution is to freeze it in flat disks. Thaw faster, but take up more room. When they are thawed you can roll them up into the loaf shape and then let them rise.

Hope that helps.

[Erik]

80% of my current job actually consists of making bread dough to be frozen, then later thawed, proofed (allowed to rise) and baked.

We form the loaves into a size that will fit in the pan that we are baking them in before we freeze them, then thaw them overnight in the fridge when we are ready to bake them.