• Reply by pammyowl on February 19, 2012 at 11:39 pm
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Are you talking about after it has been shaped and is on the baking sheet or in a pan? If so, I, personally have never had much luck with that, as it rises more for me and doesn't hold its shape. I've had better luck with refrigerating after the first rise, then taking it out, and forming for the final . You can freeze dough easily. I,ve never had a problem, but don't normally freeze it longer than a month. The longer the dough is left alone before baking does develop the flavor, so if I don't have time to finish something I don't think twice about refrigerating it. Hope this helps!

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• Reply by Mike Nolan on February 19, 2012 at 11:48 pm
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Most doughs can be frozen for a month or two, if properly wrapped. Generally they're frozen before shaping or before the final rise.

As to refrigerating doughs, it is generally better to refrigerate them BEFORE the final rise. When you refrigerate dough, it will continue to rise, though at a much slower rate. Thus if the dough was ready for the oven, it may get overproofed in the refrigerator. It could collapse in the refrigerator or when thrown in the oven. (You usually have to give dough some time to warm back up before baking it, too, which means the yeast has even more time to rise, increasing the possibility of over-proofing.)

Note that as with most baking 'rules', there are exceptions to the above.

For example, there are some hard roll recipes that recommend refrigerating or even briefly freezing the shaped and risen rolls before throwing them in a very hot oven. This is one way to try to get a very hard but thin outer crust.

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