Baking amid coronavirus? This is the best way to freeze baked goods

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TORONTO — Instagram timelines full of golden bread, Twitter threads unravelling the mysteries of sourdough starter and Facebook posts showcasing kitchen disasters -- it may seem as though self-isolation is turning everyone you know into a home baker.

One of the most popular ways of dealing with the stress of COVID-19 is to pick up a new skill and try to prepare some of the comfort food that we can no longer grab at a cafe on the way to work. The shift to home baking has been so widespread that it’s even led to flour shortages in many grocery stores among other ingredients for baked goods.

But as Canadians flood to the kitchen to knead their emotions into some fresh dough, they may be faced with a problem: how do I store this long-term?

We chatted with Tim Simpson, a pastry chef and professor at Conestoga College in Ontario, to find out how to freeze your baked goods without ruining them.

STRATEGY 1: Freeze the dough in advance

If you realize that you’ve made too much dough to eat now, or are planning ahead for the week, you can always freeze the dough ahead of time, and only thaw it out right before you plan on baking and eating it.

“Almost any dough can be frozen for future use,” Simpson wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca.

“The key to a successful and consistent product is understanding the problems that can occur in the freezing process, and minimizing them. Freezing a product at a slow rate will cause large ice crystal formation within the dough, damaging the gluten development and yeast cells.”

Sourdough yeast strains in particular are very sensitive to the freezing and thawing out process, he added.

If the dough isn’t frozen properly, it might not rise properly when you go to actually bake it, producing a flattened end result.

The best way to preserve dough by freezing is to get it down to a cold temperature as fast as possible. Large manufacturers and bakeries do this by using a blast freezer to quickly bring the temperature of the dough down to -40 C.

“At home, the better the freezer you have and not interrupting the freezing process by opening the freezer will give you the closest results to what professionals have at their disposal,” Simpson said.

If you are planning to freeze dough, you can also adjust how you prepare the dough to make sure it doesn’t go stale or get damaged during the freezing process.

Simpson recommended using a stronger flour with a higher protein level, and mixing the dough longer than you usually would in order to develop “the gluten structure slightly more … to compensate for the damage during freezing.”

Fresh yeast, if you’ve been able to get your hands on it, is more “resilient to the freezing process,” than dry active yeast. It does expire within a week or two, so Simpson noted that you can tell your fresh yeast is still good if it is light and crumbly, not wet and clay-like. Some bakeries are selling yeast and other baking staples to promote local shopping, cooking expert and chef Mary Berg told CTVNews.ca in mid-April.

Some yeasts are also specially designed to cope with freezing, but those are hard for home bakers to come by even when the world is not in a pandemic.

Simpson added that after a week of being frozen, “the viability of the yeast will start to decline.”

If you want to freeze dough for two weeks or longer, “increasing the yeast in the formula upwards of 50 per cent will help compensate for this decline in vitality.”

How to thaw frozen dough: Make sure to defrost the dough in the fridge for several hours, and then allow any yeasted dough to come to room temperature.

This is important because starting to prove a dough straight from being frozen will cause problems. (Proofing is when you leave a yeasted dough alone to rest and rise before the final shaping and baking — different recipes and doughs have different proofing times.)

If you proof a dough that has just come out of the frreezer, there will be too big of a difference between the internal and external temperatures.

“The outside will warm up quicker and proof faster than the inside, producing a product with a denser core,” Simpson said.

STRATEGY 2: Freeze after baking

So you’ve made a huge batch of muffins and realized you can’t possibly eat them all today without some serious indigestion issues. You might find yourself needing to freeze some product after you’ve baked it, to keep it longer.

“Freezing greatly slows down spoilage of a product, which is contamination from microorganisms,” Simpson said.

However, freezing can speed up the process that makes baked goods lose moisture and go stale, after which they won’t be too nice to eat.

“Between around 4 C and 10 C staling happens quite rapidly,” Simpson said.

Just like with freezing unbaked doughs, getting your breads or cupcakes or other baked goods below 4 C as quickly as possible “will greatly reduce staling,” Simpson said. Keeping your baked goods covered, and in an airtight freezer, will help as well.

How to thaw baked goods: Make sure that you avoid condensation.

“Uncovering the product while defrosting will allow ice crystals to melt and dissipate,” Simpson said. “Bread can be refreshed with five to 10 minutes in an oven at 177 C/350 F.”

While fresh is always best when it comes to taste, Simpson said that almost all baked goods have been developed to be able to freeze relatively well because it’s such a necessity in the food industry.

If you’re looking for something to make that freezes particularly well, Simpson recommends tart doughs, anything with puff pastry and pate brisee -- a classic shortcrust pastry that is frequently used for pie crusts.

Simpson may be a pastry chef, but while he is cooking a lot at home right now, he says he isn’t baking very much.

“I love baking every day for other people, but I don't eat sweet pastries very often,” he said.

However, just like anyone else, he still has his comfort foods: “Croissants and chocolates will always be my favourite things to make and eat.”