Introduction To Frozen Dough Technology
After working for years in the frozen dough industry, supplying frozen products to bakeries, cafes and restaurants, I had the chance and the pleasure to get quite a lot of experience in the production of good quality frozen dough. A good quality frozen dough product is a product which, after having been frozen for up to 6 months, still comes out of the oven as beautiful, appetising, attractive to the eyes and tasty as a fresh product. So it gives me a great pleasure to share with you some of the secrets about frozen dough production.
First don’t get mixed up with “Retarded Dough System” and “Frozen Dough Technology”. Those are two different ways of processing the dough, the first one is very simple and the second one is very much more elaborate.
– The Retarded Dough System is just normal dough that we place in a normal freezer, to be used up at a later time, may be 1, 2, or 3 days later. This dough loses some of its performance capability during the freezing process and cannot be kept frozen for more than a few days only. This is just a convenient process that we can use in some short term situations.
– The Frozen Dough Technology on the other hand is a very detailed and specific way of processing the dough, that enable the user to get the optimum performance out of the dough which has been frozen for a longer period of time. This period of time could be from just a few weeks to a few months; 6 months being regarded as a maximum for a live dough containing yeast. This is exactly what this article is all about.
First, how many kinds of frozen dough processes can we differentiate?
1) Ready to Prove Frozen Dough, good for most yeast dough and puff pastry as well.
2) Ready to Bake Frozen Dough, recommended especially for croissant and Danish pastry items.
3) Part Baked Frozen Dough, good for bread items, not recommended for croissant, Danish pastry items, and sweet bread and bun items.
4) Full Baked Frozen Dough, good for sweet bread/bun and soft roll, not recommended for bread, croissant, Danish pastry and puff pastry items.
5) Raw Frozen Dough Ready to Bake (Proving in the oven), not available yet, new technology still under intense research and development.