Parbaking

Parbaking, called part-baking in the United Kingdom, bakes a bread or dough product only part of the way, then freezes it rapidly for storage or later assembly into a finished item, a method used to scale up the mass manufacture and distribution of bread products such as bagels. The technique traces to Brown 'n Serve Rolls, developed in the late 1940s, according to a 1949 Los Angeles Times account, by former GI Joseph A. Gregor at his bakery in Avon Park, Florida. In practice, dough is baked to roughly 80 percent doneness before rapid freezing, which deactivates the yeast and stabilizes the protein and starch structure inside while stopping short of forming a crust, so the resulting loaf resists staleness better than a fully baked one and travels and stores more easily until it is finished baking.