A frozen pizza can be a godsend on those nights when a from-scratch meal just isn't going to happen, but even the best-quality frozen pizza invariably has more salt, more cheese and fewer vegetables than the pizzas I make myself. That's why I'm excited to see these tips from America's Test Kitchen on freezing homemade pizzas, which is not as straightforward as it seems.
Freezing a pizza isn't as simple as wrapping up a fully assembled pizza and putting it in the freezer, as regular dough will dry out and become tough. America's Test Kitchen uses a very wet pizza dough, patted into a disposable 12-inch pan, to combat the drying effects of the freezer, and double-wraps the assembled pizza to protect it from freezer burn.
The dough is reinforced with a few unusual ingredients — half and half, cornstarch and baking powder — which help it retain moisture and flavor while frozen. If moisture loss is the main enemy, I'm wondering if my standard pizza dough, Jim Lahey's very wet no-knead pizza dough, might fare as well in the freezer. It's certainly an experiment worth trying.
Get the tips: Secrets to Make-Ahead Pizza Dough Get the recipe: Make-Ahead Pizza at America's Test Kitchen
Do you have any tips for freezing your own pizzas?
Related: How to Make Calzones (And Freeze Them for Later!)
(Image: America's Test Kitchen)
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I always just went ahead and made a crust (granted my crust is breadier than Really Great pizza crust but I am usually making pizza to feed a crowd, half the time I just use hot roll mix) and then pre-baked it about halfway (so that it can be baked on the rack instead of in a pan, and so the top of the pizza would cook and not be doughy) and then topped and froze. Maybe not the best approach if you want it to be super impressive but it is definitely easy.
It seems much easier to buy a frozen pizza....
I feel like having to purchase disposable pans kind of makes the whole effort moot? It seems like ten times the effort and preparation rather than just buying a frozen pizza (it just seems pretty intense to have to do all of this stuff when the end result is less-quality, not-as-fresh-tasting ingredients). If frozen pizza wins because of convenience, this seems...not at all like that...
My husband and I were just talking about ways to freeze our own pizza a couple days ago. Thanks for the tip!
We keep pizza dough in our freezer all the time and thaw it out as needed on nights that we plan to make pizza for dinner. The procedures shown from America's Test Kitchen seem to be encouraging laziness.
Sure it'd be quicker to pull an already assembled homemade pizza from the freezer and simply pop it into the oven, but does the diminished quality & flavor make the small amount of time gained a good thing?
Thawing dough and making the pizza doesn't take that much longer as long as you plan ahead.
Frozen pizzas are evil for multiple reasons and this method only cuts the not-homemade evil from the list.
I'm with those who don't get it. Last night, on our way home from Bikram yoga, I decided that I'd make pizza for dinner. I had some homemade dough and half a ball of fresh mozzerella sitting in the fridge, so all I had to do was roll out the dough, slice the cheese, and make a quick sauce while the oven preheated. Within an hour of getting home I had made the pizza and a salad, fed and walked the dogs, taken out the trash and recycling, and consumed a lovely dinner with my girlfriend. If I'd frozen the pizza ahead of time I would still have had to wait for the oven to heat up, so we wouldn't have eaten any sooner, and it sounds like it would have involved a lot more work initially.
I agree with others who say that throwing together a homemade pizza is already fairly easy, esp. if you make dough in advance. That said, I once prepped dough, sauce, toppings earlier in a day and then we decided to go out for dinner. I went ahead and assembled the entire pizza anyway on my metal pizza sheet, covered it in plastic wrap and popped it in the freezer still on the tray. Once it was frozen solid, took it off the tray and wrapped it thoroughly in plastic and foil, then back in the freezer. A week later we baked it up--just as if it was a store-bought frozen pizza--and it was great. No problems that I can remember, and it was just "regular" crust. One of those things I keep meaning to do again, actually...
We usually go the frozen pizza dough route, but for us it's really hard to plan that far ahead. For us dough takes at least a day to completely thaw, even when stuck in a bowl of water, and our schedules can drastically change in that time. It sucks to thaw out a ball of dough, have something come up that makes it impossible that night, and then realize we can't use it the next few days either so it has to be thrown away.
I'm not wild on so many disposable dishes, so maybe I'll try Leah Hope's partial cooking method instead!
that is genius. I am going to gather some aluminum pizza pans and make a few of these this week.
I'm also thinking that the pans can be used again and again for this purpose, so its not as if they'd be getting tossed out.
I like $5 Dollar Dinner's homemade frozen pizza recipe. That recipes calls for partially baking the crust first as noted in Leah's comment. I think it works great.
I love America's Test Kitchen, but sometimes their pursuit of the perfect method to make something leads to it being too complex.
Yeah, too much effort for me. I keep frozen dough on hand, open a can of diced tomatoes, take out half for topping, drain the other half and then take the stick blender and a bit of italian seasoning to it for sauce. Then whatever cheese and toppings I have go on top and we're good! Actually very time efficient!