Frozen dough ball

[franko9752]

I used to make my own dough with alltrumps, at home with a kitchen aid mixer, tore up 6 of them mixing dough but they kindly replaced them, just a hobby till now, some hobby, i even got a Bakers Pride counter top deck oven a few years back. Anyway, i have been using frozen dough balls from an outlet here and i put the frozen ball in the fridge the night before use and have been using them right away instead of leaving them out to warm up. Is that real bad practice? I hand shape the crust and cook it directly on the oven stone. It shapes fast from being right out of the fridge and when i did let out to warm it seemed too soft to work with.....I really enjoy making pizza and would love rour opinion....

[The Dough Doctor]

Franko;
The reason why your commercially made frozen dough can be worked right out of the fridge is because it contains a healthy dose of L-cysteine (you will see it listed as an ingredient on the package label. The L-cysteine is a reducing agent used to make the dough softer and more extensible. The manufacturer uses it to help reduce the dough mixing time and achieve full gluten development during mixing at low temperatures. As long as you are not experiencing problems with the dough bubbling during baking there should be no issues with using the dough right out of the fridge. By the way, unless the dough balls are marked/labeled as pizza dough, it is probably a bread dough that you are working with. The biggest problem with any of the commercial frozen doughs is they don't receive any fermentation at all prior to freezing, hence, the dough balls, when slacked out still don't have any fermentation on them and that can have an impact upon the flavor of the finished crust. To some this is important, to others it is not.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor