Baking after freezing question

[Equus5O]

I'd like to make baguettes and stuffed baguettes. Given the amount of time to make them, I usually only do it on my days off. But, I want/need them on a day that I'm working. I plan on making the dough today and doing the initial 3 hour rise. Then, I divide the dough and shape and stuff them as desired. Then, they would rise for 1 1/2 hours before baking. I'd like to freeze them before baking. Should I do the 1 1/2 hour rise, then wrap and freeze them? Or, should I stuff the stuffed ones and shape the baguette loaves, wrap and freeze them, and then take them out the morning I want to bake them and let them defrost and rise? I want to have them fresh baked and hot for Saturday dinner.

I hope I'm making sense, or at least that someone will figure out what I'm trying to say!

LOL

 

[peeplessinNC]

For food safety, I would not stuff and freeze raw bread dough. Others may have other opinions, but this is one time you need to do plenty of research before doing this. And you
didn't say what you stuff them with? I'd be leary of how the stuffing ingredients would affect/react with the raw dough. If you see these stuffed loaves in the freezer case at your
store, it might mean you can do it - but remember, they flash freeze these foods at extreme temps for only a short period of time. Your home freezer would not be as low and
would take more time. Kind of iffy.....

Now freezing calzones or bierocks would be safe to do. The dough would be thinner around the filling and therefore freeze quicker.

You might want to call an agent at your Agriculture Extension office, see if they have a home economist on staff. Or Google recipes to see what they might say.

 

[Equus5O]

I make stuffed baguettes with ham, salami, provolone and roasted red peppers.

So, if I freeze before stuffing I guess I would just freeze the dough without shaping or anything. But then, when do I take them out to thaw? At 5 am Saturday morning? Then in the evening, stuff them and then do the final 1 1/2 hour rise? I don't think this is going to work. Sometimes homemade is just more trouble than it's worth

 

[peeplessinNC]

Frozen baguettes are going to take longer to thaw - calzones and bread pockets can be taken from the freezer and put in the oven.
Also, raw, unblanched red bell pepper can give off some watery liquid going from frozen to cooked.

Use your baguette dough and make calzones: take a fist size portion of dough, stretch it out as for pizza, lay fillings on half the dough, fold over dough and crimp as for a
half moon shape, freeze or bake, cool and freeze.

 

[Equus5O]

Quote:
Or, I could make the rolls like I saw they have in the pizza place. It looked like just a square of dough, with the filling on a diagonal from corner to corner, and then the opposite diagonal folded across.

Why couldn't this just be to make on my day off, so I could make them like I usually do.

And, I wish I could make the dough and hold it for a day so I could stuff and bake it. Ah .. what the heck. I'm making the dough now, and I'll figure out in three hours what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll just go ahead and make and bake them and then reheat them. But that's not the same!!

Pardon me while I sit here and talk to the computer and just rant.

Sigh.

 

[peeplessinNC]

You could make the dough and hold it for a few days, then stuff and bake - just not stuff and freeze, please.

 

[Equus5O]

So, I made the dough on Thursday. I wrapped it tightly in plastic after the first rise and put it in the fridge. I didn't wrap it as tight as I thought. Yesterday, it was like an episode of I Love Lucy when I opened the fridge door! Dough still rises when it's in the fridge! It was huge LOL

Refrigerating the dough isn't the best way to go. I didn't get much more of a rise after shaping, etc. But, everything looks like it came out okay.

 

[DuckLady]

Make, stuff and shape your dough. Freeze as desired. The morning (or night before going to bed) of the day you are going to use it, put it in the fridge on the baking sheet in the morning before work.

Cover with plastic wrap that has been lightly sprayed with pam. When you walk in the door from work, take it and put it out in a warm place to rise.

By the time you get changed, chickens fed or whatever, it will be ready for the oven.

 

[Equus5O]

Quote:
Terrie .... where were you a few days ago when I first asked?! I took the advice of not stuffing ahead of time. I'm blaming Peepless

 

[DuckLady]

I was a bakery manager for Safeway for 15 years. I learned lots of such tricks.