Freezing raw pizza

Question

I'm preparing two pizza, one for immediate consumption and the other one I want to freeze so it can be eaten next week. Is it OK if I freeze raw pizza I.e. raw dough with all the ingredients? Or should I bake the base for a bit? Or even should I bake two pizzas and freezer one, fully baked or half baked? Pizza would be prepared from instant yeast - dry powder.

Answer 1

After some teething trouble I freeze my raw (sour-)dough in a flattened ball. I no longer dust it in flour before freezing, and use a rubber spatula to help get it out of the plastic box in which I freeze it. I'd like some smaller boxes so less air goes in, but I'll work with what I've got, and those boxes stack nicely with the other meals in my freezer.

After some experimenting, defrosting in a cold part of the fridge for about 20 hours works best. And not resting the dough for too long before freezing seems to make it less sticky and easier to work.

You need to be quite generous with the flour when rolling the previously-frozen dough. This is all for a moderately thin sourdough pizza, though I have used a similar approach with my bread machine recipe using yeast; that makes quite a fluffy base.

My freezer tends to be too full to freeze pizza bases parbaked, but fitting in a box of dough is much easier.

Answer 2

I think this is just going to be a matter of preference and maybe a little experimentation.

You can't go wrong with partially baking first. Let it bake until just a bit past the point where it's risen and starting to brown - then let it cool - then freeze. It's what I do with bread all the time. To re-bake I would let it thaw first, then continue baking at your original temperature or maybe just a bit lower so the crust doesn't brown too much before the inside is done.

But you'll also notice that many if not most frozen pizzas are raw and go straight to the oven this way. There's no inherent reason you couldn't do this either. However I think it would be more difficult to pack and store. I would suggest using cardboard, or an appropriately sized pizza box, in either case lined with parchment, and then assembling the pizza directly on that surface. Wrap it well and obviously make sure it's flat in the freezer. It's just going to be more delicate work than par-baking because nothing will be set yet. To bake I'd follow similar directions to frozen pizza - place it directly on an oven rack without thawing first. You might have to experiment to find the best temperature and time though.

Personally I'd be surprised if you like the results from freezing it raw better than par-baking, and freezing it raw feels like a bigger pain, but if you see an advantage to it try it!

BTW I'm assuming a thin crust here. For a deep dish, sicilian, etc., you should absolutely par-bake first unless you have some kind of oven-safe disposable pan you can freeze it AND cook it in.