Why Chilling Cookie Dough Makes Better Cookies (2024)

FAQs

Does Chilling cookie dough make better cookies? ›

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

As King Arthur Baking explains, resting cookie dough can help your cookies taste better, as the resting process helps the flavor become more concentrated. As the dough chills in the fridge, it loses excess moisture: this, in turn, concentrates the remaining ingredients, yielding a more flavorful end product.

The Best Cookie Flavor

Resting your dough in the fridge allows for the ingredients to meld together, resulting in an undeniably better flavor profile in cookies baked from chilled cookie dough.

"When your dough is refrigerated, the butter hardens. So when you bake them, they spread less and hold their shape better," adds Epperson. "Which means a better likelihood of a soft, chewy cookie in the center." Chilling the dough creates fluffier cookies with better consistency.

While store-bought cookie dough contains preservatives that may extend its shelf life somewhat, homemade cookie dough will only last in the refrigerator for about three days stored in an airtight container. (If your store-bought cookie dough doesn't have an expiration date, add a week or so to the “best by” date.)

In this case, simply chill your cookie dough overnight, so for about 12-18 hours, and you'll have delicious cookies when you bake them!

So yes, resting your cookie dough makes better cookies. If you can't swing an overnight rest, we recommend chilling your cookie dough in the fridge for at least 1-2 hours before scooping and baking. If you really don't want to wait, shape your dough into balls and freeze them for 15 minutes, then pop them in the oven.

Storage Temperature Matters

Unless otherwise noted, don't store cookies in the refrigerator: The cool air can rob cookies of their moisture and make them taste bland. In general, store cookies at room temperature or freeze them, as specified above.

The short of it? Chilling cookie dough makes the cookies much more flavorful, with that blissful caramelized butterscotch flavor, and it makes them thicker, chewier, and browner. In the above photo, you can see this play out with my Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.

What happens if you dont chill your dough? ›

The colder your dough is before it heads into the oven, the less it will spread during baking, which makes for loftier cookies. The chilling phase also gives the flour in your dough time to hydrate, just like pie dough, which translates into a cookie that's more chewy than cakey.

For cookies, they'll spread out too quickly, tasting doughy and soft instead of full-bodied and chewy.

It's best to chill your dough in the refrigerator for the entire recommended time.

What's the solution? Once you bring the dough out of the cooler, keep it covered to prevent drying and let it temper at room temperature for upwards of 2½ hours or until the dough ball temperature reaches 50°F.

Cookie dough can stay fresh in the refrigerator for five days. It's best to bake and eat on the first day and will get drier the longer it stays in the fridge, and this will result in crumbly and dry cookies after too long.

"My golden rule for baking is make it cold and bake it hot," she said. The food and lifestyle maven said that using frozen butter over a box grater creates perfect size pieces. "You'll have no problem with it making the most beautiful flakiness -- in biscuits, scones, pie crusts and other laminated doughs."

Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.

Double Your Yolks Most cookie recipes call for at least one egg. You can try omitting the white of each egg, which tends to dry out when baked, and replacing it with an additional yolk. Plus, egg yolks have more fat than egg whites, which helps to keep your cookies moist and chewy.

After chilling, let your cookie dough sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes (or more, depending how long the dough has chilled) before rolling into balls and baking. Sometimes after refrigeration, cookie dough can be too hard to roll/handle. If a recipe calls for chilling the cookie dough, don't skip that step.

Making your cupcakes and cookies a uniform size is a matter of scooping out the mixture equally before baking.

How long should you let cookie rest? ›

However, as we all know, warm cookies are a wonderful thing. So, let your cookies cool just until they hold their shape (generally after about 5 minutes on a cookie cooling rack) and savor them warm while you can.

When handling dough in bread making, it is a distinct advantage to allow the dough to rest during the process. This allows the gluten/gliadin to relax and easily reform itself into the long protein chains which are the superstructure of the finished loaf.

To extend the shelf life of products, many bakers use specially formulated enzymes for preservation. These naturally occurring protein compounds can keep baked goods soft while preventing crumbling and staling.

Keep those cookies crisp by storing them in an airtight container. Some people toss a piece of bread in with the cookies to help absorb any excess moisture. You could also re-crisp them by baking on a wire rack in a 300 degree F oven for a few minutes.

Firmer Dough

Firm dough prevents the cookies from spreading too much, which is why chilling the dough is a crucial step for cut-out and rolled cookies. "The colder and more solid the fat is, the less the cookie will spread," says food stylist and recipe developer Caitlin Haught Brown.

Cookie dough should be semi-solid in consistency so that it can hold its shape while baking. Because of this, it doesn't actually need to be at room temperature before going in the oven. Some recipes can even benefit from being slightly colder, especially if the ingredients are naturally runny.

It depends on your goals, it's not "wrong" to do it either way. i want it to be thin and chewy. Taking it out from the fridge and go straight to the oven making it thick and not spreading very much.

Refrigerate the Dough

Before you start adding ingredients to your dough, there's actually another baking hack you can try to fix wet dough: refrigerate it! Chilling or refrigerating your sticky dough can turn the butter cold and means that the dough will stop sticking to your hands.

You can chill your dough during either the first or second rise. Your yeast won't give you much love if it's asked to do both rises in the fridge, so it's best to do one or the other at room temperature.

What is Overproofed dough? ›

Over-proofing happens when dough has proofed too long and the air bubbles have popped. You'll know your dough is over-proofed if, when poked, it never springs back. To rescue over-proofed dough, press down on the dough to remove the gas, then reshape and reproof. (This method won't work for sourdough bread.)

Put simply, retarding dough is the process of slowing down the final rising in the bread-making process. This is easily done by proofing bread overnight in the refrigerator since the cold slows down the rise. It has its benefits, including adding flavor and allowing you to bake the bread at a later time.

Rolled cookie dough that you are going to cut into shapes should be chilled! It will prevent spreading and weird shape stretching, but it will make rolling the dough out easier! Even just one hour in the fridge can make a huge difference. You can even chill the dough a second time once it is cut and on the pan.

Baking at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature will help cookies stay soft: they'll bake faster which means they aren't in the hot, drying air of the oven too long. Pull the cookie sheet out of the oven when the cookies are just set: underbaking is better than overbaking.

To make forming the chilled cookie dough more manageable, pre-portion it by scooping balls of dough into individual cookies, placing them on a sheet pan or in a resealable bag, chilling, and then baking right away.

Well, the long and short answer to chewy cookies is it's all about the moisture content. Cookies that are dense and chewy incorporate more moisture into the batter. This can be achieved by making substitutions with wet and dry ingredients, or even just changing the way you incorporate certain ingredients.