Can you use tea towels in the freezer?
Recently I made some pizza bases (well sort of – but that is another story). As you can see they aren’t picture perfect, but they will do. I wanted to freeze them to use another time and I did my usual thing, which is to lay them on baking paper and then put a layer of greased clingfilm over the top to stop them sticking to the top of the freezer / to the clingfilm. Once they were frozen, my plan was to take them out of the freezer and then properly wrap them up in clingfilm.
Freezing pizza bases without the use of single use plastic has been something which has been bugging me recently. I posted the question to Facebook and Twitter and there were two main suggestions – either make the pizza bases smaller/ cut them up and put them in containers or put them in a freezer bag. You can reuse plastic freezer bags, however I don’t have any and I wondered if there was a plastic free freezer bag alternative.
I can across a couple of ideas for fabric freezer bags – including a video of how to make one and an article about homemade bread freezer bags. I couldn’t find much more information out there on how practical it is to freeze foods in fabric though and put the idea on the back burner. That is until I realised I had run out of clingfilm and having already frozen my pizza bases I needed to find something I could cover them in pretty quickly.
The only thing I could think of was to cover them in tea towels. I wrapped them up in two teatowels and kept them in place with elastic bands. Then I put them back in the freezer. The tea towels now feel like colder versions of their normal selves i.e. they haven’t frozen at all. I’m really not sure how long the pizza bases will keep this way, but I’m really interested to find out!
Does anyone have any idea if there is any reason I shouldn’t freeze bread or pizza bases in tea towels, or is it something you have tried and found to work ok?
So far I have given up shampoo and supermarkets as part of My Year of Eco Challenges and now I’m preparing to give up plastic too. If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!
This post has been shared at Saturday Show and Tell and Simply Natural Saturdays.
You've probably written a follow-up post by now, but tea towels by themselves won't work in the freezer because they are not airtight. I'm afraid your pizza dough is going to dry out and get that freezer burn smell/taste.
That said, you could put stack the tea-towel wrapped dough in a big rectangular airtight stainless container like the ones you can get at the online store Life Without Plastic.