Deep freezing of dough pieces and ready-made bread

[Deep freezing of dough pieces and ready-made bread]

Deep freezing of dough pieces and ready-made bread

S. Coven, L. Young
"Practical recommendations for bakers and confectioners"
QUESTION:
"Is it possible to freeze non-proofed dough pieces and store them for later use?"

ANSWER:
Freezing and storing unproved bread and other types of yeast dough is quite possible, it is often called shock freezing. The use of such a freezing method requires some attention to all parameters of dough making, processing and subsequent use after defrosting. Some of the most important points are reflected in the guidelines below.
• Use non-steam dough, as the fermentation process before freezing has an adverse effect on the quality of the bread.
• Use those components and dough recipes that will produce good products for any production method. Freezing and thawing cannot improve the quality of the product.
• Increase the yeast content in the recipe to compensate for the decrease in gas production due to the death of some yeast cells during freezing and storage, or use a yeast strain with more resistance to freezing.
• Freeze dough as soon as possible after shaping to minimize gassing.
• Since the dough sometimes grows in size during freezing and may not fit the baking sheets after removing for thawing, you may need to adjust the size of the items before freezing.
• Use a fast freezer with heavy air movement, but avoid air temperatures below minus 30 ° C due to adverse effects on food quality.
• To reduce the loss of quality of food, before storing it, make sure it is completely frozen and that the temperature in the center of the food is at least minus 10 ° C.
• During long-term storage in frozen form, the volume of the finished product gradually decreases; to compensate for this decrease, it is necessary to increase the proving time.
• Defrost food at low temperatures for a long time to reduce the temperature difference between the center of the dough and the surface towards the end of the proofing.

Carefully select the range of products you want to make from frozen dough. Results will be better with small diameters such as rolls or baguettes than bulky products such as tin bread.
QUESTION:
"We deep-freeze baked goods and we run into some problems. For products with a crispy crust, it falls off, while some other products, when stored for a long time in the crumb, form white translucent areas that are perceived as very hard. Are these problems related to our work? freezing chambers? "

ANSWER:
Your first problem is the separation of the crust from frozen yeast dough products, which can occur during storage, but more often appears when the product is thawed. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as shelling. Some partially baked frozen products may experience similar problems.

When bread products leave the oven, the moisture content in the rind area is much lower than in the crumb.This difference in moisture content is significantly greater in crispy baked goods than in many other types of bread, such as toast bread, and is an inherent characteristic of the product. The difference in moisture content between the crust and crumb partly determines the differences in texture: a crust with a lower moisture content is harder and harder than a more moist crumb. The difference in moisture content also means that the concentration of salt in the crust area is higher than in the crumb, resulting in a lower ice formation temperature there.

The combination of differences in freezing point and structure means that the crust and crumb will expand and contract at different rates. The stress that this creates at the border between the two areas can become so great that they separate from each other. This phenomenon will occur under almost all freezing conditions, so it is unlikely that the immediate cause of this problem is your freezer compartment. You have to come to terms with the fact that you are unlikely to be able to successfully freeze crispy products, since the only solution is to equalize the moisture before freezing, but the product will not have a crispy surface!

Your second problem may well be related to the operation of the freezer; this phenomenon is called "frostburn" (freezing burn). This is due to the loss of water in various areas of your product when stored frozen. About 30% of the water in bread remains unfrozen even at minus 20 ° C. This "free" water can escape from the product into the atmosphere of the freezer or package, where it eventually turns into "frost". The tough translucent areas you see are areas of crumb that have been dehydrated in the freezer.

This condition is aggravated whenever the temperature in the freezer compartment has risen above the freezing point of the food. Higher temperatures accelerate moisture loss, and subsequent slow re-freezing also exacerbates the problem. We recommend that you analyze the operation of the freezer and especially any parameter changes during defrosting. Also, take a close look at how the camera works and try to keep opening and closing to a minimum. This is a common cause of the problem as cold air exits the chamber and is replaced by warmer air, which raises the temperature of food near the door or hatch cover.

[Sanadorin]

Please share your experience in freezing finished baked goods. I love the oven, but I don't bake as often as I would like. We cannot afford a lot of flour, because we have to monitor the weight. I don’t buy baked goods because I don’t like them, and, most importantly, I don’t trust them. And when guests appear on the doorstep, you want to treat yourself to homemade delicious pastries, but you don't always know when the guests will come, and you don't always have time to bake something before the guests arrive. So I thought about freezing my homemade pastries so that I could get them at any time and quickly defrost and heat them in the microwave. I have very little experience, I froze it for a day Sanadorin lemon faucet, froze fried pies for three days and it happened to freeze homemade bread for a short time. The result has been good so far. I have a huge freezer in my closet, I always keep one of the drawers half empty. Tell us, how are you doing with freezing baked goods? I just baked a mountain of my loved ones inusin ginger curd muffins, how many can you keep in the freezer?

I often freeze. But not dough, but a ready-made freshly baked product. For example, pastries made from butter dough. It helps when "guests are on the doorstep." Immediately into the microwave and a hot pie on the table.

I freeze various kinds of cupcakes, and I deliberately bake them for future use. Individually, each in plastic wrap and in the freezer.I also freeze bread. After it has completely cooled down, I cut it in portions, wrap it in foil and in the freezer. The quality does not suffer, but I don’t defrost it in the microwave (except maybe the bread in the toaster), it leaves itself remarkably, and in 10-15 minutes

[Aunt Besya]

ABOUT, Aunt Besya! Thank you very much for the valuable advice on piece wrapping in plastic wrap! And I’m a bastard, yesterday I froze all 24 cupcakes in bulk in one large bag. I'll go pack each one.