dear sir,
Im interested in making pizza (dough and topings…) freezing it in blast freezer at about -40F and selling it to shops for home use.
Is there some trouble regarding how long it will be good for using it and where can I find some more infos about that
Thanks in addvance
P.S. sory for my English becouse im from Croatia and it is not my language
best regards
Dalibor Jurina
Making frozen, topped pizzas is pretty straight forward/easy, most of the traditional frozen pizzas use a par-baked crust as the base. To the par-baked crust, apply the sauce, we recommend a thicked sauce, one that is higher in solids content, about 14% should work well for you. Then apply the cheese, followed by the vegetable toppings. We would suggest using individual quick frozen toppings, but in all probability, these will not be available to you, so you will most likely need to go with fresh toppings. Don’t go too heavy on the toppings as they will tend to release water during baking in a home oven. Any meat toppings should be pre-cooked to ensure food safety. Place the dressed pizza on a pizza circle that has a white or wax treated side (in contqact withthe pizza base) as this will ensure the pizza doesn’t pick up the cardboard flavor during storage. Shrink wrap the pizza with a suitable film (designed to create a good moisture and gas barrier, that will also hold up well under the low temperature conditions. Note: If you will not put the wrapped pizza into an individual box, you will need to put a paper disk over the top of the pizza to prevent the pizza from being exposed to ultra violet light, which will cause the toppings to fade in color as well as develop rancidity with storage.
Be sure the pizza is properly named, and labeled in accordance with any/all laws and regulations, and don’t forget to provide production dates, use by dates, as well as consumer handeling instructions.
Again, I don’t know anything about your food laws, but here in the U.S. you will also need to have your production facility approved and monitored by government food safety people, plus you would need to have GMP’s (good manufacturing practices as well as a HACCP program in place before production even begins. Be sure to find the right people to talk to before venturing too far.
As you can see, making the pizza is the easy part, making it by the governing rules and regulations is a totally different story.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor