Here's How Long You Can Store Homemade Pizza Dough

There's nothing quite like making your own pizza. Arranging the toppings as you see fit, and picking out the cheese and sauce to your liking are some of the best parts. Making the dough, however, is not as joyous. Creating pizza dough from scratch is an exact science, which makes keeping it fresh all about precision. Thankfully, there's an expert who explained to us how long we can store homemade pizza dough.

After putting in the work of kneading and shaping the dough, you may decide that you want to save it for later. According to Andrea Congiusta, executive chef at Pasta Beach, there's a specific time frame for using the pizza dough. "You can keep the dough preserved in the fridge for about 48 to 72 hours, or until you see the pizza losing [its] strength, and you see the dough lose its shape and the dough ball becomes flat," he explains.

Once the dough is done proofing, the clock starts for how long it can maintain its shape. If it does happen to fall flat, all hope isn't lost. For dough that loses its shape or flattens out, you just need to knead and ball it up again. However, the dough may need to proof for four more hours to regain its strength. Still, repeating the process is worth it to save your pizza. What's most important is that you proof it properly, especially the first time around.

In order to avoid any stomach issues, chef Congiusta recommends fermenting the dough for a long period of time. "To be digestible, pizza dough needs to proof for 24 hours at least," he says. "Let it proof at room temperature for two hours, form the pizza ball, and let it sit for another 24 hours." Although a whole day should be long enough for dough to proof, you can always use the float test to tell if your pizza dough is ready.

Break off a piece of dough and drop it in a glass of water. If it sinks, it needs more time. However, a floating piece of dough means you're ready to make pizza. Of course, it's possible to leave the dough a little too long if you forgot when the 24 hour clock started. That said, you can easily repurpose over-proofed pizza dough into a flatbread pizza, or fix it by pushing out the air and balling it up again.

If you don't want to go through the process of re-kneading and proofing the dough in order to keep its shape, simply freeze it instead. After the dough proofs, split it into separate balls and brush them with olive oil. Place the balls of dough on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan and let them harden in the freezer before transferring them to resealable plastic bags. In the freezer, it should last for around three months.