Thawed pizza dough-- how many days will it last bef. it gets rotten?

barb48
  • Posted by: barb48
  • December 29, 2015
  • 26202 views
  • 5 Comments

5 Comments

ChefJune December 30, 2015
OTOH, since you're making pizza and not bread, and I presume you are putting toppings on, your dough should be just fine, even if it doesn't rise much. Bread dough is among the most forgiving things you can bake. I've left it in the fridge for a week and it was fine.
 
kate December 30, 2015
I find most bread doughs (including pizza) improve with a couple days in the fridge. They peak at about 3 days, 5 days is about the maximum. It's not that it will "get rotten" per se, but yeast will run out of sugars to eat and the texture will suffer.
 
amysarah December 30, 2015
Don't know a time frame for spoilage, but I have defrosted pizza dough then ended up not using it right away, more than once. Always fine a day or two later. Just store it in the fridge and make sure to let it come to room temp before proceeding.
 
702551 December 29, 2015
My guess is that there's some level of yeast mortality also involved.

After all, if refrigerated dough could survive to provide a high satisfaction product after a week of refrigeration, then upscale bakeries and pizzerias would only make one batch of dough a week. But we know that's not the case for these high quality operators.

I assume that most pizzerias that making their own dough do it for the next day's service. If there's a little left over, well, it would survive for the next day's service. Likewise, if you are running out, you might use a bit of the dough intended for tomorrow's service and have the baker make more dough today/early tomorrow.

Let's frame this a different way: if you have 75% yeast mortality after 5 days, does it make more sense to try to resurrect that dough in the next day or two, or it is more time efficient to make a fresh batch? Also, I'm thinking that dead yeast may contribute to off flavors which is why old dough isn't particularly prized by pizza makers.

Of course, I'm speaking about natural dough. Not sure what would happen with commercially produced pizza doughs and their additives.
 
Nancy December 29, 2015
Pizza dough is bread dough...don't think it ever really goes rotten, but it may lose its oomph (a technical term) if left several days without punching it down and turning it.
I use bread recipes that say you can leave an unbaked dough up to 3 days in the fridge with periodic punch-down (say 2 or 3 times in every 24 hours) to keep the yeast distributed in the dough and working.
I suspect if you leave it long enough, the carbon dioxide will just disperse, and leave behind a heavy dough with little active yeast. Maybe possible to reactivate the yeast and hence the dough, but I'm not sure.
 
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