Freezing and the subsequent frozen storage of unfermented dough pieces represents one kind of interrupted fermentation and is used in both plant bakeries and craft bakeries.
Thawing and fermenting unfermented frozen dough pieces can take place in the fully automatic fermenter or at room temperature with a subsequent fermentation in the fermentation chamber. The dough pieces should be thawed initially before baking and gently brought to fermentation maturity.
For storage times of unfermented dough pieces covering several weeks, the dough pieces are initially blast frozen at -35° C for approx. 30 minutes and subsequently wrapped in suitable packaging (plastic foil plus carton packaging). A core temperature of -7° C has first to be obtained here. During the subsequent storage freezing at -22° C, the core temperature drops to below -20° C. For frozen storage, the observance of constant storage temperatures is imperative to avoid losses in quality.
