The Fastest Way to Thaw Frozen Pizza Dough Without Ruining It
Pizza for dinner always seems like a great idea until I get home and find out that no one has ever put dough in the fridge to thaw. Okay, it was me, but whatever. Don’t change your dinner plans and don’t use the microwave. The fastest way to safely thaw frozen pizza dough is to use a cold water bath.
You don’t have to worry about the rampant growth of bacteria when defrosting pizza dough, but there’s another risk you need to reduce when defrosting yeast dough: over-proofing. If you leave frozen dough on the counter for a couple of hours, or worse, defrost it in the microwave, it will heat unevenly. This can cause some parts of the dough to thaw and go into the proofing stage while others are still frozen or just come to room temperature. By the time the center of the dough is pliable, you’ll probably have used up most of the yeast’s energy before it hits the oven.
If you know how to plan ahead, the easiest and coolest way to thaw frozen pizza dough is to refrigerate it overnight. It requires no manual labor and the dough can slowly return to a pliable state without fear of proofing and blowing out all that leavening power. At the same time, defrosting in the refrigerator takes from eight to ten hours. When you’re short on time, there are very limited ways to reheat something without using aggressive heat. This is where a cold water bath comes in handy. Since water is a better conductor of heat than air , this cold dip in the pool will defrost the dough noticeably faster than in the refrigerator. This also applies to frozen meat.
Wrap the frozen ball of dough in a plastic bag and let the air out before tying it up. If your dough is already in a plastic bag, you are one step ahead. By squeezing out the air before sealing the end, you will prevent the dough from floating in the water bath. Fill a large bowl with cool tap water. The bowl should be large enough to hold the dough. Place the bag of dough in the water, and leave the tail outside the bowl so that water does not get there. Place a small saucepan or other bowl over the dough and cover with water. This will serve as a weight to keep the dough from floating. A one pound disc of pizza dough will thaw in about 45 minutes. If you are defrosting more, add 15-45 minutes to this time. From time to time, come and feel the dough to see how it thaws. If you’re having trouble keeping it underwater, just turn it over every 15 minutes. Once the dough has come to the center, dry the bag and use the dough.
This cold water bath method ensures that the outside of the dough does not start proofing significantly faster than the center of the dough before it is ready to use. Keep that in mind before you yourself, “Why don’t I use boiling water to make it thaw even faster?” Remember, the goal is to ensure that the dough doesn’t heat up unevenly. Use the 45 minutes of thaw to spread the filling and preheat the oven. Then, once your dough is ready to be tossed, you are ready to roll.