freezing bread dough
I'm making Ken Forkish's whole wheat bread (from the book flout water salt yeast) lately. it's incredible, but normally i half the recipe since i don't want two loaves (all his recipes are for 2 loaves). last week i used the full recipe, planning on freezing one. the first one (no freezing) came out beautiful, literally perfect. the second i shaped and froze. i defrosted it in the fridge last night, put it in the loaf pan this morning and let it proof, but it wasn't proofing as well as it should. after 3 hours it seemed proofed according to the finger dent test even though it hadn't risen so much... i put it in the oven anyway. i rose only about half as much as it should and came out small. any ideas how to freeze it better in the future? i've heard of needing to double the amount of yeast, or use active instead of instant yeast etc...any advice on freezing bread dough?
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This article from Red Star Yeast partially explains why it's harder for home bakers than for commercial ones to get good results with frozen unbaked yeast dough.
http://redstaryeast.com/yeast-baking-lessons/postpone-baking/
(Also searched King Arthur Flour site, but had trouble locating their freezing advice.)
The one frozen-unbaked type of recipe I've had success with is baking powder biscuits...they really do puff up when after being taken raw from freezer straight to oven.
I've found with some more years of bread making that I get best results from freezing dough (after mixing or first rise) or freezing baked bread or rolls.
Freezing the shaped loaves after second rise doesn't work as well.
UPDATE ON DEFROSTING UNBAKED DOUGH:
The overnight defrost in the fridge is still good.
But I've also found that room temp defrost (1 to 3 hours, with checking to see when it's ready to shape) is also good if you want bread the same day.
