So, one reason I don't make a lot of pizza at home (Ok, none) is that I only eat pizza once a week or less so keeping the ingredients around isn't too feasible. Combined with having a good pizzeria near me... I just get slices or small pies when I want 'za. However, I'm thinking that it might be possible to make several pizzas at once, then freeze them. Anyone do this?
Details -
1) these would be done in a regular oven so NY style dough.
2) I'd freeze them on rounds, then vac seal them.
3) I'm looking at smaller, 9-12" pies.
Last edited by rickgregory; October 18, 2020, 04:22 PM.
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I wouldn’t make the pizza and then freeze. But all components of a "plain" NY style pizza with low moisture mozzarella freeze well. You can freeze the cheese, sauce and dough in single pie increments.
rickgregory - I think you’ll never get the texture to be right when defrosting/reheating. It’s hard enough to reheat a pizza well from the fridge that tastes close to it did originally, so I can’t imagine adding a deep freeze would be even that good. The way I figure it, not even multi billion dollar companies have figured out how to make a decent frozen pizza.
I'd try making a batch of dough, portion all but two dough balls. Cook and eat one that night and make and freeze one. At the worst, you might be disappointed in one pizza. If you like the results, you can make and freeze pizzas in the future.
BTW - I have had decent results thawing frozen slices and reheating them on a preheated baking steel. A large CI pan or a griddle could also work. So you might want to cook one and freeze it to compare to the uncooked frozen pie.
I freeze dough and also sauce in one pie bags. I wouldn't freeze the cheese though. For me, pizza is a quick and easy meal. Take dough and sauce out of the freezer in the morning and then build the pizza and cook it just before I want to eat.
yeah it's not the dough and sauce that's hard. it's the toppings. If I want, say, a sausage or other cured meat, I need to have it on hand. Same for mozzarella say. Or peppers.
I typically have cured meats such as pepperoni and salami in the fridge already. Peppers too typically although I don't use them on pizza. It's the fresh mozzarella that might require a trip to the store. Seems like you could have frozen sausage on hand pretty easily. Again, I don't put that on my pizzas though.
Make two identical pies.
Freeze one, Icebox th other one.
Wait a day, or a few, then cook em both simultaneously, see whatcha think.
I'd reckon it'd be jus fine.
It would be an interesting experiment. I would just stretch the dough and add sauce before freezing. The dough stretching is the most involved and time consuming part. Everything else I would throw on there just before it hit the oven.
I haven't frozen a whole pie, but I do know that the "big guys" use flash freezing equipment that can't be duplicated with a home freezer, so that might be a factor. I freeze dough and it turns out pretty good, though I can detect some slight textural differences from fresh, never frozen. For you experiment I'd suggest a low hydration dough will likely work better. Also I have successfully vac packed toppings, including fresh mozz, refrigerated not frozen, to preserve quality.
Frozen homemade pizzas are obviously far superior to frozen store bought pizzas, and not all that hard to make yourself. I'll show you how! Well we've reached it, the end of my pregnancy. We're hoping to welcome
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