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“Pizza dough seems to be more resilient for freezing …”
If the pizza dough has olive oil (fat) as an ingredient that may be what helps it endure the freezer.
Freezing dough after mixing, before proofing, take less freezer space, less packaging, easier to transport, etc. This is how a lot of the bakeries inside of grocery stores produce their fresh baked bread products – from frozen dough deliver during the night.
There is some stuff on frozen dough by Lin Carson on the Bakerpedia website. She comes at it from a commercial baking perspective, but still some useful stuff here for home bakers wanting to freeze dough:
I’d need to do an actual test, but my hunch is that you can freeze a yeast dough for longer than a sourdough, and get more of a post-defrost rise too.
Perhaps if freezing sourdough make it a hybrid with a pinch of yeast added to the dough.
That would probably help.
For me, most of the time, I think I’d rather store flour or wheat berries and leave my freezer space for other things 
@Fermentada For all it’s worth, I’m just going to interject here: I’d personally just rather freeze baked and sliced loaves of sourdough bread. That way I have sliced bread at the ready to pop into the toaster any time I want some. I understand lots of bakers want to freeze unbaked or partially baked dough for a variety of reason; all of which are certainly valid. I’m just not one of those bakers.
Blessings,
Leah
I hear you. I like the freezer as my backup plan for when the bread I’ve already baked isn’t flying off the cutting board fast enough. My ziploc bag currently has one naan, a few slices of oat-rye bread, cinnamon raisin, and test bake three from this experiment (so that bread has been frozen as dough and as bread!)
I’ve never frozen dough preferring to wait and see it right through till its baked. Refrigeration can have some benefits in the baked goods but freezing would only be for stocking purposes and wanting freshly baked bread at the same time.
DING! DING! DING! We have a winner! 
I am with you on this. I went in the other direction – figured out have to make smaller batches of dough so I go with fresh baked breads more often without wasting or freezing.
I tend to agree with all of you about freezing baked bread rather than dough. I also bake small loaves and freeze them sliced. Once I started doing a refrigerator retard, I realized that freshly baked bread could be available on demand at any time of day with minimal last minute work, so the value of freezing dough for a home baker seems low except in unusual circumstances. Thanks for doing the experiment, Melissa!
I recall in 1971 working full time, very young and wanting fresh bread without knowing how to bake it, you could buy frozen loaves at the grocery store - a bag of 5 (and very inexpensive). These loaves were shaped, but not risen, dough. You had to take them out of the freezer and leave them on the counter to thaw and rise then bake. I don’t remember how many hours they had to be left out before baking but they did rise nicely and tasted good too. Also, I don’t recall any problems such as ‘they’ve been in the freezer too long to use’ - or perhaps we just ate them quickly. No shortage of volunteers to help with consumption. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sourdough, which I knew nothing about, but hey, when you’re 17, any fresh baked bread is a step in the right direction. Think I’ll give this a try just for auld lang syne and see how it goes
Hey Melissa great experiments.
Back in the 70’s I started an in-store bakery in my grocery using either Rich’s or Rhodes frozen dough both bread and pastry doughs. The frozen bread dough was pre-shaped and we defrosted a few cases in the walk in cooler overnight and then placed in bread pans or re-shaped for Italian bread (I can’t believe I am exposing the truth) in the morning. The Dough was set in a rotisserie style proof box and transferred to a rotisserie oven when ready.
I don’t know how the dough was manufactured but I have to assume it was mixed, shaped and frozen. I say that because it had to be at least final proofed and it took a lot longer than an hour. Was hours!
Today I mix pizza dough in batches, divide, roll in balls, oil and freeze, NO FERMENTING. I defrost overnight in a 38F refrigerator and set out about 2 pm to ferment which takes about 3 hours normally. Again never had a bad pie crust using this method which is similar to what was done in the 70’s.
As far as pizza dough is concerned I have been reluctant to use starter, mix, shape and freeze. I have read and we all know what we read is 100% true that part of the microbes die off and was not sure how much extra starter to use to compensate or whether to spike with commercial yeast. Add the factor that sourdough SOMETIMES is difficult to control the timing. Not good if planning to eat at a specific time.
I do use 1.6% instant yeast in my pizza dough whether I freeze it or not. Not an issue, and I do mix and match grains depending on what I have.
Anyways good job on the write-up.
Dennis
Ditto. I cannot recall it specifically as 1971, but it was the early 70’s. And I recall them as little frozen cardboard boxes – remove the wrapper, open the top of the box and leave on the counter for the frozen dough to thaw/rise, then bake in the cardboard box. They were wonderful, the best fresh baked bread back then. Unbeknownst to us at the time, that was the dawning of commercially, mass produced frozen dough, the predecessor of what would become the frozen pizza industry. Frozen pizza had been around for a couple decades prior, but not with the quality and mass production realized in the 70’s. This was also the time when the Radar Range, aka microwave oven, was affordably produced and began appearing in households.
Thank you for sharing your bakery secrets 
That sounds like a logical process to me.
It seems wild that you can mix pizza dough and freeze it without fermenting, but then I think about how I store instant yeast in the freezer and it makes sense.
When freezing dough, 30% of the yeast dies off, mostly due to water molecules expanding and squishing the yeast cells. I cannot think of a reason it would be any different with the wild yeast in sourdough. An obvious solution (also the solution commercial bakeries use) is to increase the amount of yeast in the dough to compensate for the die off when frozen. The addition of a small amount of baker’s yeast should not affect the flavor of sourdough, but should enhance the quality of the proofing after thawing, even if doing a retarded multi-day thaw-and-proof in a refrigerator. I have no idea how to calculate what would be 30% of the wild yeast in sourdough.
Mine was 5 in a bag, no extra wrappers. I’m going to try one soon, maybe today, using just white all purpose, that will probably have the best chance of success and if it’s a little warped it will still make good apple bread pudding with cinnamon or bread crumbs
A loaf only a mother could love - Method A - I froze my fully risen dough a month ago after this article came out and just baked it. Results were “interesting” - from appearances, it looks like the sourdough loaves I made before I knew about creating steam. The top is pale with some dark splotches. Not much of a crust anywhere. I think because the loaf was frozen, there wasn’t much water to evaporate into the closed container during the first half of the bake. So next time, maybe I’ll keep it steaming longer and/or add some water (to create steam) somehow. It’s a great experiment and I’m happy to know there are ways to freeze and bake later. Thanks for the article!
LOL that is a good way to describe it.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Even only one week after freezing, my crust was strange…plus the steam issue you describe, I agree that’s an issue. If your baking vessel is cast iron (resistant to thermal shock), you could throw an ice cube in to create steam. Normally this would be done when you first load the dough, but I don’t think sizzling steam will do much on a frozen crust. The ice cube might make more sense 5-10 minutes in to the bake time (just briefly lift the lid) – but I truly don’t know.
Thank you all for sharing, this is very helpful.
I have been freezing bread and run it under tap water while frozen, then into the air fryer for 10 minutes at 400 F, the result is never as good as freshly baked.
I found that warming up within 2 hours before serving is not easy with slicing, just like freshly baked bread needs its cooling period.
Thanks,
A