Difficulty with frozen bread dough
My favorite yeast bread dough yields more rolls then my family can eat. I usually freeze it in quart-size Ziploc freezer bags. When I'm ready to bake a few rolls, I take a bag out, let it defrost enough to shape the rolls, let them rise, and bake them.
Sometimes this worked really well, yielding delicious fresh fluffy rolls. Other times it flops into a sticky flatbread that doesn't bake through.
I'm not sure why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Is it a problem with the yeast? The defrosting process? The storage?
Best Answer
I've had better luck freezing bread dough before it rises, or at least right after punching it down. At normal household freezer temperatures, the yeast may keep growing very slowly. If you freeze the already-risen bread, you risk getting a yeasty-tasting flat pancake :-).
And of course you're right to look at the defrosting process too. If you try to push this too fast, you could end up killing the yeast entirely.
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Why is my frozen bread dough not rising?
To fix dough that won't rise, try placing the dough on the lowest rack in your oven along with a baking pan filled with boiling water. Close the oven door and let the dough rise. Increasing the temperature and moisture can help activate the yeast in the dough so it rises. You can also try adding more yeast.How do you fix frozen bread dough?
Place frozen dough in your refrigerator 6 to 12 hours before using. Dough will not rise, but will be thawed and ready to use. Set dough out to rise for 2 to 3 hours, until dough is 1\u201d above pan. Actual time depends on the temperature of your kitchen.Will bread dough rise after being frozen?
Using Frozen Bread DoughYour dough still needs to go through a second rise before baking, so don't put a frozen loaf of bread dough directly in the oven.Does frozen bread dough need to be kneaded?
Use store-bought frozen bread dough, though, and you skip the kneading and first rising and go straight to the good part: Turning the dough into rolls, loaves, cakes, pizza, flat bread or sticks.More answers regarding difficulty with frozen bread dough
Answer 2
Prepare the rolls as if you were to cook them–rising times included–, and froze them at the moment you would put them in the oven.
When you want to use the rolls: Do not defrost them. Put them directly in the oven.
It works for croissants too!
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