Frozen Dough Tips for Small and Mid-sized Bakeries

Jim Little, 3/2/22

Overview
I’ve had 30 years of baking experience at all levels of scale in the baking industry, from true
Artisan (no additives, machinery limited to mixing, dividing, and limited pre-shaping), Semi-
industrialized Artisan (no additives, some automation, higher throughput rates), and Industrial
(additives, little to no fermentation, full automation, high speed). At all scales, I’ve frozen
yeasted dough with varying degrees of success. Below are some tips based on my experience
at work, at from my education at the Culinary School at Kendall College and at the American
Institute of Baking.

Yeast and Freezing

There are many different types of yeast used in frozen dough, including fresh (cream, cake,
crumble), dry (active dry, instant, osmotolerant), and semi-dry. What all yeast types have in
common is that once the dough has been mixed, there is a short window of time where the
yeast is in the “lag phase” and hasn’t acclimated to its new environment. Once the yeast exits
the lag phase and resumes its metabolic processes, it will draw water inside its cell membrane.
When this yeast freezes, it will be more likely to die at some point during freezing or frozen
storage. Besides having less available yeast to proof the dough, the other side effect of freezing
is that the dead yeast releases a natural antioxidant, glutathione, that weakens the gluten
network and lengthens proof times and leads to lower baked volume. For bakers that use
artisan techniques and length fermentation times before shaping, this can pose a problem. The
fixes for this problem will depend on how much frozen storage time is needed, how accepting
the baker and their customers are to certain additives, and how much flexibility you have in
your process.

Short freezing / No Additives

In this scenario, you can take your regular recipe and process and freeze the dough up to 2
weeks with reasonable success. A small (10%) increase in yeast might be helpful to maintain
proofing and volume but is usually not necessary if your schedule allows for a little extra time.
No compromise in fermentation time or blast chiller are needed. You may see some
improvement by freezing the dough piece (or laminated dough block) right before final shaping,
because shaping after thawing allows you to build back some of the strength lost from the
freezing process. But you can also freeze shaped pieces with decent success.

Longer freezing / Some additives

For freezing times from 2 to 12 weeks, you will have more erratic dough performance and
finished quality if you give any fermentation time. If you want to avoid using dough
conditioners and maintain some flavor, you can ferment 25%-50% of the flour in your recipe in
an overnight preferment with very little yeast, add the normal amount of yeast when mixing
the dough, chill the dough immediately after mixing until it is almost frozen, finish processing,
and then freeze the dough. But for best results though, avoid all fermentation before freezing
and use a dough improver, which could be “clean label” (ascorbic acid, enzymes, lecithin) or not
(ascorbic acid, enzymes, chemical emulsifiers). Plan to freeze the dough pieces within 15
minutes or less after mixing and target a cooler dough temperature such as 18C/65F. A 50-
100% increase in yeast is usually needed (reducing water accordingly) and adding 1-2% gluten
protein (either by using a stronger flour or by adding vital wheat gluten) may also be necessary.
After the dough is shaped, freeze in a blast chiller until the core temperature is -11 to -9C (12 to
16F) and then move to a storage freezer.

Very Long Freezing / Additives

Above 12 weeks, I’ve seen marginal success with preferments or Clean Label systems. Smaller
shops will probably never have success with this because of long processing times, and for sure
the use of chemical emulsifiers like DATEM and SSL is required.