Basic rules for storing pizza.

The most delicious pizza is fresh from the oven, when the heated spices are especially aromatic and the melted cheese stretches pleasantly. However, it is not always possible to eat everything in one sitting. The dish cools down, and if nothing is done, it gets unpleasantly wet or dries out and becomes hopelessly spoiled. In this article we will tell you how long you can store cooked pizza and how to do it correctly so that it remains fresh after heating.

How to keep pizza warm after delivery

Imagine: the courier has already delivered the order, but the guests have not yet arrived. What can you do to keep your food hot for as long as possible? The main thing is not to panic. Here are some working methods:

Build a mini-thermos from scrap materials: tightly wrap the pizza box with food foil to retain heat. Cover the top with a thick towel or blanket. It is better not to leave the dish in this form for a long time, otherwise the filling may become damp and stick to the lid of the box.
If there is no foil in the house, a simple plastic bag can replace it.
Preheat the oven to 50°C and place the circle in it. Here lies another danger: even in such a cool oven, the dough and cheese can dry out. To prevent this from happening, place a container of water on the lower level. By evaporating, the moisture will prevent the baked goods from drying out.
Use a picnic thermal bag. In order for a whole circle to fit into it, you must first disassemble it into pieces and put them in a food container. Hermetically packaged, the dish will remain fresh for a long time.
If you refuse the delivery service and are delivering the order yourself, place the box on the front seat of the car and turn on the heating.

Important!

The shelf life of finished pizza at room temperature should not exceed 6 hours. If sausage or frankfurters are used in the filling, it is reduced to 4 hours. Fillings with fish and seafood spoil the fastest. Such a product should not remain on the table for more than 2 hours.

Factors that affect the freshness of pizza

There are certain factors that affect shelf life:

Readiness.
Place.
Filling.

Frozen semi-finished product can be stored in the refrigerator for up to six months from the date indicated on the package.

The finished product can remain usable for 2 to 6 hours at room temperature. However, the shelf life depends on the filling. Pizza with meat filling will retain its freshness the longest - up to 6 hours . If sausage or frankfurters were used - up to 4 hours . Fish and seafood fillings are perishable products and can spoil in just 2 hours .

Refrigerated storage time:

With meat, cheese, sausage and frankfurters at temperatures below 5 degrees – 2 days .
With fish and seafood at a temperature of 7 degrees - no longer than 8 hours .
Ready-made homemade pizza can be stored for 1 month in the freezer at -18 degrees .

If you plan to enjoy your favorite dish at a picnic, then transporting pizza should be done using a special thermal bag. The product cannot be kept in such a shipping container for more than 3 hours.

How to reheat

It is best to do this where the pizza was baked, that is, in the oven. In order to restore freshness to the dish, it is enough to hold it for 5-7 minutes in a preheated oven at a temperature of 180-200 °C. A sure sign that it’s time to take it out is melting cheese. A few more secrets:

Do not place food directly from the refrigerator into the oven. Otherwise, you risk getting an inedible product with a “rubber” dough. Wait for the pieces to come to room temperature.
If you put parchment or baking paper under the circle, the dough on the bottom will brown and become crispy, and then you won’t have to wash the baking sheet to remove any sticky residue.
To refresh the flavors, before heating, you can drizzle the filling with olive oil, add chopped tomatoes, and sprinkle fresh grated cheese and chopped herbs on top.

If you don't have an oven, use the stovetop. The pizza will also lightly fry in the pan:

Turn on the stove. Set the heat to medium.
Place 1 or 2 pieces in the pan.
Cover with a lid. If you don't have one, use aluminum foil as a lid.
Wait 6-8 minutes.
Enjoy.

When you have neither the time nor the desire to tinker with the stove, there is one more way - the microwave. It is the fastest, but the least preferred. Professional chefs and gourmets believe that such heating significantly worsens the taste of the dish: the crust softens and the dough becomes viscous.

How to reheat:

Set the microwave power to 500 W.
Place the piece on a plate and be sure to cover with a special lid.
Heat for 1 minute.

A few secrets:

Place a paper towel under the pizza before reheating.
Place a glass of water next to the plate in the microwave. This will allow the dish to heat up more evenly.

Important

! Whatever method you choose, the heated pieces should be eaten immediately. Once cooled again, they will turn into “rubber”.

Shelf life of frozen pizza

Recently, more and more people prefer semi-finished products. Pizza is no exception. The semi-finished product has its undeniable advantages, including: speed of preparation and convenient methods for storage, as well as, if purchased in a store, a comfortable price. So, in order for a home-made semi-finished product to be stored for a long time, it is necessary:

Subject the product to primary freezing in the freezer at a temperature of -22 degrees;
After 60 minutes, remove the frozen product;
Wrap in cellophane and put back.

Speaking about frozen pizza base and semi-finished products purchased in a store or supermarket, the following storage conditions should be highlighted:

Temperature from -18 to -23 degrees Celsius;
Cannot be re-frozen.

The shelf life of semi-finished products is 180 days .

How to store in the refrigerator

If you simply put the leftover pizza in the refrigerator directly in the packaging, they will quickly lose their “marketable” appearance. The filling will release its juices, which will be absorbed into the dough and it will soften. And the cheese will dry out and become weathered. To prevent this from happening, first carefully wrap the pieces in several layers of paper napkins or towels. In this form, in their “original” packaging, they are stored in the refrigerator for up to 12 hours.

To increase this period by 2 days, you will have to try:

Wait for the pizza to cool to room temperature.
Wrap each slice with cling film. Instead of film, parchment, baking paper or foil will do.
Place all pieces in a container.
Close the container tightly with a lid to prevent the dough from absorbing foreign odors.

Second option:

Line the bottom of the container with a paper towel.
Lay out the product in one layer.
Cover with a towel again.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the container is full.
Cover the container tightly with a lid to block air access.

Third way:

Place each piece in a separate paper bag.
Wrap in film or put in a plastic bag.

Important!

The maximum shelf life of the product in the refrigerator at a temperature of +5 ° C should not exceed 3 days. If a dish sits in your refrigerator longer, it can no longer be saved. Just throw it away.

Subtleties of storage

In order for pizza to delight you with its unique taste after heating, you should know the intricacies of its storage.

The purchased pizza, if it will be consumed no later than 12 hours after purchase, can be placed in the refrigerator directly in a cardboard package, wrapping each piece in several layers of paper napkins or towels.

In cases where it is necessary to store it for a longer time, you should release it from the packaging and adhere to the rules listed below. These rules apply to both store-bought pizza and home-cooked dishes.

Cold storage

Before putting the pizza in the refrigerator, cool it to room temperature. You can store it in several ways:

Each piece is packaged . Materials for this can be: cling film, foil, parchment. Then, the packaged pieces are placed in a container and tightly closed with a lid.
Layering pizza slices in a container . To do this, paper towels are placed at the bottom of the container. Then slices of pizza are placed in one layer, which are covered with the same paper towels. Thus, alternating layers, fill the entire container, which is then tightly closed.
Separately, each piece is wrapped in a paper bag and packaged in cling film or a plastic bag.

How to keep pizza warm?

There are times when pizza is not consumed immediately, but after 2-3 hours. Depending on the circumstances, you can ensure that it remains warm before it reaches the table by doing the following:

Wrap it in foil and cover it with a blanket or towel.
Place in the oven and turn on the converter mode at 50 degrees . In this case, it is necessary to place a container of water in the oven. This is done to prevent the pizza from drying out.
If you are planning a trip to nature, in order to keep the product warm, you need to put it in a container with a tight lid and place it in a thermal bag .
To bring pizza warm from a store or pizzeria, you can put it in the front seat of the car with the heat on.
If you have to transport the product on public transport, you must ask the store or pizzeria staff to pack it in two layers of foil . This is especially true when it's cold outside.

Frozen pizza

In cases where there is not enough time for anything, the frozen version of the product comes to the rescue. You can buy it in the store, or you can prepare it yourself, making the filling according to your taste and desire.

There are no questions about how to store already purchased frozen pizza. But when preparing a homemade version, they appear.

In order to properly freeze pizza, you need to prepare all the ingredients needed for this: make the dough and cut the ingredients for the filling. After this, make holes in the rolled out dough using a fork, coat the base with tomato paste or ketchup and lay out the chopped filling.

Before putting the semi-finished product in the freezer, you need to prepare a sheet of parchment or foil , place the workpiece on it and place it in the freezer, setting the fast freezing mode to a temperature of -18 to -22 degrees . At this temperature, the pizza will harden in an hour and a half. After this, you need to take it out, pack it in a plastic bag and put it back.

How to put pizza in the freezer

If you are definitely not going to enjoy pizza in the next 2-3 days after purchase, it is better to immediately send it for long-term storage. That is, in the freezer. For this:

If the pieces were stored in the refrigerator in a plate, use a plastic container.
As with short-term storage, drain pieces with paper towels.
Cover with a lid.

Alternatively, instead of a container, you can use film: wrap each piece in it or place it in a separate vacuum bag.

Important!

At a temperature of -18 °C the product can be stored for up to 6 months. Pizza that you bought in a store already frozen can be stored for up to 1 year.

You can freeze not only the finished dish, but also semi-finished products:

dough, previously divided into parts so that each one makes one flat cake;
a ready-made flatbread with a raw filling, which just needs to be baked in a hot oven.

Reheat frozen pizza using the methods described earlier. First, the pieces are left at room temperature for an hour or dispensed with without defrosting.

History of pizza

The history of pizza goes back to ancient times. We can assume that as soon as a person learned to bake flatbread with any filling, this was already the beginning of the history of pizza. In ancient Egypt and Persia, peasants baked open flatbreads, laying vegetables and meat on their surface. The Egyptians sometimes added seaweed to the dough, which gave the sour yeast dough a pleasant aroma.

Hot, with stretchy cheese... perhaps this is exactly what the legendary food of the gods was? But pizza, of course, has never been the food of the gods. More like food for the poor. The ancient Greeks also had their own pizza - cheese, olives, herbs, garlic and onions served as fillings. This dish was called "plakuntos".

But modern historians still have not decided which of the ancients can bear the name of the inventor of the well-known dish - pizza.

In a word, pizza is an ancient and mysterious dish. In Italy it is one, in America it is another.

How to store pizza with seafood and fish

Dishes containing fish and seafood require special conditions and storage periods, failure to comply with which can result in severe food poisoning.

Maximum shelf life for this pizza:

on the table at room temperature - up to 2 hours;
in a thermal bag - no more than 3 hours;
on the refrigerator shelf - up to 8 hours;
in the freezer - no more than 1 month.

The menu has more than 20 dish options with fillings for every taste. The delivery service is waiting for your orders every day from 10:00 to 23:00. Couriers are required to use thermal bags, so your pizza will be fresh and hot upon delivery. Standard waiting time is 45-60 minutes. When ordering from 10 rub. Delivery within Brest is free.

We believe that our pizza is so delicious that you will eat it right away and the advice in this article will not be useful to you. To order, call or use the form on the website.

The product is spoiled: how to determine and what to do?

In order for eating pizza not to end in complete disappointment, or even worse, poisoning, you need to eat only fresh product .

If a dish is prepared at home, it is important to make it from high-quality and fresh products, observing the above-listed terms and storage conditions.

When purchasing, you need to know the rules that allow you to purchase a fresh product:

The packaging should visually look neat and new.
The shelf life must be indicated on the packaging.
The shape of the pizza should not be deformed.
The filling should look fresh and the dough should be crispy. If the dough stretches like rubber, it means that the product is most likely not fresh and has been reheated. And this increases the risk of getting poisoned.
If pizza was ordered to your home, you must make sure that the courier delivered the dish in a special thermal bag.

Before eating pizza, you should follow simple rules: storage rules; shelf life; be careful and careful when purchasing. If you do not follow these recommendations, you can suffer greatly - get serious poisoning . Therefore, if you have doubts about the quality of the product, you need to understand that it should not be consumed.

Methods for reheating pizza

The easiest and most affordable way to heat up pizza is to place it in the microwave. The product is placed on a plate in one layer, wrapped in film (not foil) and left for 1 minute (at an oven power of 500 W). Instead of cling film, you can use a plastic bag or a special lid.
You can make your baked goods more delicious if you keep them in an oven preheated to 200°C for a few minutes.
If you cover the baking sheet with parchment, the pizza will brown and be covered with an appetizing crust. You can also add grated cheese, vegetables and grease with olive oil. You can remove the treat from the oven after 5 - 7 minutes, when the cheese has melted.
It’s even easier to do the same thing in a frying pan over low heat. Cover the pizza with a lid and wait for the cheese to start melting. Usually 7 - 10 minutes are enough for this.
Do not place a product in a preheated oven that was previously in the refrigerator. To prevent the dough from losing its softness and fluffiness, it needs to be left in natural conditions for some time. But in any case, after heating, the pizza should be eaten immediately, without waiting for it to become “rubbery”.

The benefits and harms of pizza

Also, do not forget that this dish can bring benefits and harm. Since pizza contains tomatoes, lipoline enters the human body along with them. This substance gives vegetables their characteristic color. Lipoline is rich in antioxidants. Thanks to them, diseases of the cardiovascular system and oncology are prevented. Eating pizza frequently can reduce your risk of esophageal cancer by 59 percent. Calcium also enters the body along with cheese. But do not forget about the considerable amount of fats and calories that contribute to the appearance of extra pounds. If pizza is made from white flour, which contains a lot of yeast, then the dish will also have beneficial properties. For them to activate, the dish must be cooked for at least 11 minutes at a temperature above 287 degrees. In most cases, the dough is made from wheat, it contains many useful substances. They contain antioxidants that have anti-inflammatory properties. Thanks to them, the body can be more protected.