Frozen Bread Dough

A few months ago, I posted about making homemade bread. I've experimented a little bit with the recipe and have been substituting whole ground flaxseed meal for butter (3:1 ratio of flax/butter). Even though I use mostly white flour, the flax gives the bread a nice nutty flavor add adds fiber, lignans and omega-3 fats. I think I'll keep making it this way since I really liked the results.

Now, in the past few months I've discovered that I love making/eating homemade bread, but I don't like the mess that it makes. (I hate cleaning dough out of bowls!) So, yesterday I decided to try making a double-batch of bread and freezing one loaf of dough. To do this, I ended up letting the dough rise for the first hour and punching it down. Then, I divided it in half and shaped two loafs. I put one in a greased pan to let rise for another hour and then baked it. I put the other one in a wax paper-lined pan inside of a large ziploc bag and put that in the freezer. Then, the next morning, I look the loaf out of the pan, wrapped it tightly in wax paper and sealed it in a ziploc in the freezer. I thought I would use it later in the week. Well, the first loaf didn't last that long! We ate half of it at dinner last night and pretty much finished the other half at breakfast and lunch today. So, today I took out the frozen loaf, put it back in a loaf pan and let it defrost/rise for most of the afternoon. The result looks pretty much like a normal loaf. I think that I'll probably make a double-batch from now on so that we can enjoy fresh bread more often.