Food Safety & Storage
The supplied evidence does not establish a general food-safety limit for refrigerated dough. For quality, one study found an apparent optimal cold-proofing window of 8–24 hours at 5 °C, while 48 hours was not included among the optimal conditions; this should not be treated as a universal safety recommendation.
Cold-proofing duration depends on the dough formula, yeast, temperature, and refrigerator performance. The most directly relevant study tested enriched dough at 5, 10, and 15 °C and reported optimal quality at 5 °C for 8, 16, or 24 hours, and at 10 or 15 °C for 8 or 16 hours. A separate study found that conventional baker’s yeast continued fermenting substantially when dough was stored for days at 5 °C, whereas a specially selected mutant yeast could produce acceptable dough after one week; this concerns fermentation performance, not proof that the dough was safe to eat. Therefore, the evidence supports treating roughly 8–24 hours at a reliably cold 5 °C as a studied quality range, not as a definitive safety ceiling.
Answer last checked 2026-08-18T07:16:15.904Z. Answerlog reads titles and abstracts, not full papers, and does not assess study quality or claim consensus.