Frozen Pizza "From Scratch"

[Chris Hennes]

So, life is busy right now: I had a frozen pizza for dinner. Blech. But, there is no decent delivery option here, so when I'm pressed for time, frozen pizza is a go-to meal for me, if only I could find one I liked. Near as I can tell, decent store-bought frozen pizza is a lost cause, they just don't seem to exist (and I'm no pizza connoisseur). So what I want to do is make up my own frozen pizzas, using non-crap ingredients. I think Fat Guy's "Low-effort, low-mess pizza @ home" recipe might be a good start, but I'm curious about whether anyone does this. I am looking for a pizza that requires zero prep and bare-minimum cleanup when it's time to eat it: preheat the oven, bake for however long, eat, go back to work. It doesn't have to be the greatest pie ever, it just has to not suck. Any ideas?

[Fat Guy]

I've had some early success with freezing a homemade equivalent of Stouffer's French-bread pizza. Not on homemade bread. Store-bought French bread with Pomi tomato puree, low-moisture mozzarella and grated Parmesan. Heats up nicely in the toaster oven. My experiments are in an early stage, but I'll give a fuller report when I get the process more refined.

[Andrew Fenton]

I've had a lot of success par-baking and freezing pizza dough. You top and bake the frozen par-baked crust; it's not as good as fresh dough, but it's still pretty good. That's a low-prep rather than no-prep approach, but it might be worthwhile to try topping the par-baked crust and freezing the whole thing.

[HungryC]

I haven't tried freezing an assembled pizza, but I do have recs on decent-tasting frozen pizza: try the Amy's spinach, the California Pizza Kitchen margherita, and the American Flatbread cheese version....Amy's and Cali PK are sold by mainstream supermarkets & WalMart/Sams, the American Flatbread is available at Whole Foods.

I freeze dough; it defrosts overnight in the fridge or at room temp in 2 hours. A quick press-out by hand onto parchment takes 3-5 minutes, if you're slow. Preshredded cheese, Muir Glen or Newman's Own marinara straight out of the jar, and turkey pepperoni take less than a minute to apply. Buy unfrozen dough blanks (like Boboli or Kabuli) and you don't even have to press out the dough.

Never tried to freeze an assembled pizza...seems like you'd need flash-freezing to do this properly (without a great loss of quality).

[Tri2Cook]

I tried various methods of freezing pizzas because we had people requesting it to take to their cabins. I thought it might work out as a good extra income source during tourist season if we advertised it. I never achieved a result I considered good enough. The veggies are particularly unpleasant, they turn to mush and release a ton of liquid during baking. Even the cheese texture just isn't right after freezing. The results were better than grocery store frozen pizzas but not even close to on par with the fresh pizzas.

[snowangel]

Pita pizza. Get (or make) some decent pizza, freeze it.

Take one round of pita (yes, frozen is just fine), and score an "X" on it through the top layer of the pita -- more on that later.

Add toppings of choice (yes, pre-shredded and still frozen cheese works just fine.

Pop in a toaster oven.

But, should you not score the pita through the top layer, all of the cheese and toppings make for a mighty fine mess on the bottom of the toaster oven.

Decent pizza in less than it would take to find the number of a pizza joint.

Oh, and crank the toaster oven up and set a timer so you don't forget about the 'za.

[Chris Hennes]

I think fresh vegetables are probably out of the picture in this endeavor: I am figuring I'll go with either just cheese, or cheese and salami/ham/sausage/bacon, since I have homemade versions of all of those (only one at a time! no topping overload). The cheese is what has me the most worried: I've never tried to freeze cheese. At least in this case it's getting baked, and I like it browned, so it doesn't seem like it has to hold up all that well to freezing.

[Tri2Cook]

You can probably get a result you'll be happy with in that case. It will be better than the store pizzas in any case. Both raw and par-baked crusts handle the process pretty well. Pre-freezing the crust before topping it with cold sauce seems to help reduce the sauce soaking into the crust but that didn't seem to cause any major problems regardless. Flash-freezing would undoubtedly be better but that wasn't an available option for me to test. The texture of the cheese does change from freezing, it's noticable but it's not a huge difference.

[HungryC]

The cheese is what has me the most worried: I've never tried to freeze cheese. At least in this case it's getting baked, and I like it browned, so it doesn't seem like it has to hold up all that well to freezing.

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Low-moisture, skim-milk mozz freezes fine (I use it in made-for-the-freezer lasagne). I wouldn't try it with a fattier/wetter mozz; the texture would certainly suffer.

[deltadoc]

When I make fresh pizza dough, I usually make one right away that gets put on a corn meal dusted pizza peel and directly onto the hot pizza stone in the oven.

The dough is enough to make 3 pizzas total. I put the other two dough crusts onto round pizza pans. I paint them with olive oil to keep them from getting mushy.

I proceed to make the pizza the same way as the fresh one.

When the time comes to take one out of the freezer, I simply remove it (easily) from the pizza pan, and put it on a pizza peel and then into the oven. I usually let the oven and pizza stone heat up after I take the frozen pizza out of the freezer. I shake the pizza peel occasionally to keep it from sticking. It usually partially defrosts while the oven is heating up to the mandatory 550F.

Sometimes it takes 12-14 minutes instead of the usual 9-11minutes for a completely fresh pizza, but I can barely tell the difference between them.

Sometimes I actually think the partially defrosted pizza has a tendency to be a bit crisper crust (they're always thin crust anyways) than the fresh ones.

So, it is very convenient for me to make 3 at a time, and freeze 2.

doc

[Lisa Shock]

When I make pizza, I often make a double or triple batch of dough and refrigerate what I won't use after one fermentation. The extra dough is good for, usually, two days. It can be popped out of the fridge, allowed to warm briefly, rolled out and used. -If you can stand to eat pizza three nights in a row. (I can, with different toppings, my husband cannot)

After that, I use it as a patè fermentè tossing it in the mixer with some water, a little yeast and enough flour to hold it together. I usually about a half cup of water for each lump of dough that started out as a potential pizza but has gotten too old, essentially, I am doubling what I had. So, there will be a leftover chunk of dough which will be good the next night for calzones, stromboli, foccacia, etc.

The dough will spring back to life pretty fast during a short fermentation near the preheating oven while I prep toppings.

It's not the finest pizza crust on earth, but, it's quick and easy. The original batch of dough I make has a very high hydration rate, and I handle it almost like ciabatta.

That said, you could assemble a simple pasta dinner in about 20 minutes, too.

[Chris Hennes]

That said, you could assemble a simple pasta dinner in about 20 minutes, too.

There are a LOT of dinners I could make in 20 minutes: I'm looking for more like 2 minutes here. Baking time is irrelevant, I work while it cooks. There are days when every minute counts...

[OliverB]

there's a lot of science in frozen food, I'm not sure you'd get something nice on your own, I'd expect a somewhat soggy crust unless you're very low on moisture. But that spells dry pizza to me.

I never make frozen pizza just as it comes out of the box, at least I'll throw some garlic powder and italian herb mix on, and some pepper flakes once it's done. While none of them are fantastic, I think the ones at Trader Joe's are pretty good and some of the DiGiorno, as well as Cali Pizza Kitchen and some of the Wolfgang Puck (if they still make them?). I don't know if I'd want to spend a lot of time trying to make my own to freeze.

If pressed for time, a sandwich with melted cheese is done in less than 10 min and can be a lot better than any frozen anything IMO. Assemble good sandwich stuff, one min in the micro and you're ready to go.

But if you manage to make a pizza that freezes and bakes up well, do let us know for sure!

[Heartsurgeon]

when i make pizza, i always make two pies. We eat one pie, and i let the other pie cool off a little bit, them cut it in half. I can fit the halves into some large foodsaver pouches, and vac seal them. into the freezer..

when its time to eat the frozen pie, i cut the foodsaver bag open, and microwave the pie. tastes great (just like the original). if i want a crisp crust (usually not crispy at this point) plop the pie onto a pre-heated pizza stone for a few minutes.

my pies consist of home made dough (wolfgang puck's recipe), grated sharp cheddar, smoked gouda, and mozarella as the cheeses, garlicy olive oil, salt, pepper, and a protein (drained clams, and pre-cooked morrocan spiced lamb are my favorites). NO TOMATO products.

the lack of liquid ingredients (other than the olive oil) helps keep the crust crisp initially, and hold up well after freezing/reheating.

[Toliver]

My mom would usually make more pizza than we could eat (though raising 4 always growing always hungry boys gave her a run for her money ) so she always froze some for future dinners. She baked it first, though, then froze it. It was never frozen unbaked. Her dough was always Apian Way bread/roll mix.

Reheated pizza that had been frozen was, of course, nothing like the fresh-out-of-the-oven pizza but it was edible.

[snowangel]

That said, you could assemble a simple pasta dinner in about 20 minutes, too.

There are a LOT of dinners I could make in 20 minutes: I'm looking for more like 2 minutes here. Baking time is irrelevant, I work while it cooks. There are days when every minute counts...

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Chris, pita pizza, even if the cheese is frozen, is about 1-2 minutes from pulling the pita and cheese from the freezer to the toaster oven.

ETA: 2 minutes if you have an assistant (Peter) or two minutes if it is you alone.

Edited June 29, 2009 by snowangel (log)