The Fastest Way to Defrost Frozen Pizza Dough Without Ruining It
Pizza for dinner always seems like a great idea until I come home and realize someone has never put the dough in the refrigerator to thaw. (Okay, that was me, but whatever.) Do n’t change your dinner plans or turn on the microwave. The fastest way to safely defrost frozen pizza dough is to use a cold water bath.
Do not defrost pizza dough in the microwave.
You don’t have to worry about rampant bacterial growth when thawing pizza dough, but there is another risk that needs to be mitigated when thawing yeast dough: over-proofing. Thawing frozen dough in the microwave will cause the dough to heat unevenly. This may cause some areas of the dough to thaw and enter the proofing stage while other parts are still frozen. Even if you knead the dough in short bursts while defrosting in the microwave, it is impossible to compress and knead the frozen areas with the softened ones. By the time the center of the dough becomes pliable, you will probably have used up most of the yeast proofing before it even gets into the oven.
You could try a less drastic thawing of just placing an ice blob on the counter, but depending on how warm your home is, you may still run into the problem of uneven thawing and possibly the outside of the dough proofing while the center is frozen. . Moreover, this method also takes three to six hours.
Thawing pizza dough overnight in the refrigerator
If you’re a good planner, the easiest and coolest way to defrost frozen pizza dough is to leave it in the refrigerator overnight. This happens automatically and the dough can gradually return to a pliable state safely. Since the temperature doesn’t go above 41°F, there’s no need to worry about proofing quickly and losing all that leavening power. Defrosting the refrigerator takes ten hours or more. When you’re short on time, there are limited ways to warm something up without using harsh heat: that’s where a cold water bath comes in.
Since water is a better conductor of heat than air , a cool dip in the pool will defrost the dough much faster than a refrigerator would. The risk of uneven defrosting is greatly reduced if the cold tap water temperature is between 50 and 60°F. Defrosting in a cold water bath also takes very little time, so this method is also suitable for frozen meat .
How to defrost pizza dough in a cold water bath
Wrap the frozen dough ball in a plastic bag and press out the air before sealing it. If your dough is already in a plastic bag, you’re one step ahead. Squeezing out the air before sealing the end 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 of the bag outside the bowl to prevent water from getting inside.
Place a small pan or other bowl over the dough and fill it with water. This will be a weight that will prevent the dough from floating. A one-pound disk of pizza dough will defrost in about 45 minutes. If you are defrosting more, add 15-45 minutes to this time. From time to time, come up and poke the dough to see how it melts. If you have trouble keeping it underwater, simply turn it over every 15 minutes. Once the dough is pliable in the center, dry the bag and use the dough.
This cold water bath technique 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 this in mind before asking yourself, “Why don’t I use boiling water to make it thaw even faster?” Remember, the goal is to prevent the dough from heating unevenly. Use the 45 minutes of thawing time to properly layer the filling and preheat the oven. Then, once your dough is ready to fold, you’ll be ready to do so.