Cookaholics Bulletin Board

My wife is Eastern European. Bread is life. We like to have fresh bread around. I like to make bread. I am, however, no great baker; I make an satisfactory loaf of bread, but know very little of baking beyond the simple making of bread.

With 2 of us, we like smaller loaves. We like loaves no more then a couple of days old. Making a loaf at a time is exceedingly inefficient; I should be making 4-8 loaves at a time... which brings us to the question.

At what stage is it best to freeze, and what procedure should I use to finish? Please don't give generic "before baking" type answers; I have lots of those, I am overly pedantic and don't understand such loose-y goose-y speak. If I knew baking, I'd probably get it, but for now I need it in freezing bread for dummies speak.

Help!

When I worked for a bread bakery, we froze it at night rather than throw it out -- in other words, after baking and thoroughly cooling. We never advertised the frozen bread, but enough people knew about it and it's half-off price, that the freezer rarely needed purging. It never tasted stale right out of the freezer, but it staled more quickly than bread that had not been frozen.

I'm assuming you'd like to freeze it and bake it later, though. I've never done loaves that way. I have done rolls, though. I wait until the formed rolls are completely risen before freezing. I should say that freezing seems to inhibit the oven-spring somewhat. I don't mind it so much for everyday, but for "company" rolls, I parbake. I usually pull them from the oven just as the bottoms are getting some color and the outside is pretty well set but still very pale. Then I cool them completely and freeze.

I freeze bread almost after I make it. Bake, cool, slice, freeze. It works for us.

Amy

How are you thawing?

Freshly Bread whenever you want it for Dummys

Scale ficelles at 150-200 grams each or batards at 250-300 grams
200 gram boules are just big rolls so I like to scale them at 350-400 grams.
3.5”x 7” pans work well with 300-400 grams of dough or 4 loaves from each 2 loaf recipe for standard bread pans.

Follow the recipe but remove from the oven when half baked. The dough should be set but not browned. For most loaves 15-20 minutes will do it. Cook, Double wrap and freeze.

Finish baking from a frozen state at the same temperature as the original recipe. Bake until brown and delicious. Allow to cool for 30 seconds to a minute before tearing into them and smearing them with butter. .

Interesting approach. We do something similar for our pizza crusts when we have a party and want to make multiple pizzas in short order. We bake the crusts for 5 minutes and then let rest, wrap and freeze. When it was time to make during the party, we'd pull the crust out, let thaw, top and bake. Works pretty well for us. When I get back into my baking routine, I will give this a try. It would be nice to have ready to bake loaves.

Paul, I buy the frozen Kirkland brand baguettes at Costco that are par baked and use those alot.
However in your situation, how about the five minute a day type breads? I know Reinhart has a book on the concept as well..might be worth a look for you.
That would enable you to make a small loaf daily or almost daily w/out all the effort.
I use to make 2 loaves of the NYT no-knead bread at a time, thinking we'd freeze one. Invariably, we ate it.

Jim, I will definitely try that out. I'm pretty good at half-baked schemes

Thank you for bringing it down to my level of ABC!