How Long to Refrigerate Cookie Dough. As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that and you won’t see a noticeable difference in the final product, says Haught Brown.
Anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. The longer you chill the dough, the more flavor will develop. The flour will also absorb more of the moisture so the thicker and chewier the final texture will be.
“When your cookie dough is not refrigerated, the butter is at room temperature. Therefore the heat from the oven reacts with the butter quickly, making it spread thinner,” says Epperson. And while some people prefer a crunchy, thin cookie, there are arguably many more people on team soft, thick cookie.
As a general rule, any cookie dough left on the counter at room temperature will be good for 2-4 hours but then may risk going bad, especially if it is already past its “best by” date. The cool, dark, air-free container in your fridge or freezer will be the best place to maximize the lifespan of your cookie dough.
How long does it take refrigerated dough to come to room temperature?
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.
How to Soften Chilled Cookie Dough
- Merrill recommends putting dough near a warm stove, and pounding it with a rolling pin once it starts to soften.
- Trena cuts the dough into smaller pieces using a pastry cutter, figuring that they will come to room temperature faster.
Edible cookie dough should not be left out of the fridge for more than two hours. Leaving perishable food at a temperature of 40-140F for over two hours increases the chance of sickness resulting from bacteria growth.
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.
Add in extra mix-ins or toppings.
Add extra mix-ins or toppings like white chocolate chips, candies, pretzels, or nuts to break up the flavor profile of the dough.
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.
If you’re looking for a way to improve your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, make them with refrigerated cookie dough. Refrigerating the dough for even 30 minutes can improve the texture and flavor of that famous $250 Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie myth or a tried-and-true Toll House recipe.
The primary reason for a brief resting period to redistribute the liquid in the dough. While the dough sits, turning from loose and soft to drier and more scoopable, the flour is hydrating, yielding cookies that will bake and brown more evenly.
How do you prepare dough after refrigeration?
After a cold bulk fermentation, allow your dough to regain some warmth on the counter for 40 to 60 minutes and become slightly puffy before shaping it. You can help the process along by stretching and folding the dough.
How do you bake refrigerated dough?
The dough should be covered tightly with plastic wrap and draped with a kitchen towel to prevent it from drying it. When you’re ready to bake the dough, take it out of its storage container, shape it, let it rise until it has doubled in size and bake it.
How do you use refrigerated dough?
You can leave the dough in the refrigerator for as long as 24 hours. When you need to use it, just take it out of the fridge, punch it down, and allow it to rest before shaping.
How long can dough sit out?
Summary. The standard time dough can be left out for is 4 hours. But this can change depending on the ingredients used and the baking methods used. The use of science to study the bacteria growth generated during the baking process should be acknowledged.
Most recipes recommend chilling cookie dough for several hours in the refrigerator, but the good news is that you can use your freezer in a pinch. Better Homes and Gardens says that you can freeze cookie dough for one-fourth of the recommended refrigeration time with good results.
How to Make Crispy Cookies. While brown sugar keeps your cookies moist and soft, white sugar and corn syrup will help your cookies spread and crisp in the oven. Using more white sugar in your cookies will result in a crispier end product. To achieve a crispy cookie, skip the rest in the fridge.
Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.
Chilling cookie dough controls spread.
Chilling cookie dough before baking solidifies the fat in the cookies. As the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt than room-temperature fat. And the longer the fat remains solid, the less cookies spread.
Adding more moisture to your dough in the form of extra butter, egg yolks, or brown sugar will make your cookies even softer.
Rest the Dough A secret baker’s trick is to rest your cookie dough in the fridge. You can rest it for at least an hour, which will evaporate some of the water and increase the sugar content, helping to keep your cookies chewy. The longer you allow your dough to rest in the fridge, the chewier your cookies will be.
Most of the time, cookies need to cool for around five to ten minutes before they can be moved and consumed. But it’s not as much of a cut and dry answer as you may think.
Resting cookie dough in the fridge can make it harder to scoop out into individual portions. To counter this, scoop and roll your cookie dough before putting it in the fridge. Scooping freshly mixed dough is so much easier, and you’ll still get the benefits of resting the dough!
So long as they end up evenly flat, that is; squashing cookies haphazardly under your palm means they may bake and brown unevenly. Still, if you care deeply (or even casually) about the look of your cookies, you can take the flattening step as an opportunity for enhancement. The bottom of a glass works fine, it’s true.
Can I put dough in the fridge after it has risen?
Yes, risen dough CAN be placed in a refrigerator. Putting risen dough in the fridge is a common practice of home and professional bakers alike. Since yeast is more active when it’s warm, putting yeasted dough in a refrigerator or chilling it slows the yeast’s activity, which causes dough to rise at a slower rate.
Can you refrigerate dough overnight?
Can You Store Bread Dough Overnight? Yes, absolutely. In fact, storing bread dough overnight might be the better option. Generally, recipes will recommend leaving bread dough for at least 2 to 3 hours.
How long does it take for dough to rise?
The secret of successful rising
Most recipes call for the bread to double in size – this can take one to three hours, depending on the temperature, moisture in the dough, the development of the gluten, and the ingredients used. Generally speaking, a warm, humid environment is best for rising bread.
Does refrigerated dough go bad?
If stored in the refrigerator, a standard dough seems to last 5-10 days before it starts to develop excessive bacteria. Dough containing milk-based ingredients or eggs can go bad much faster, especially if stored at room temperature for longer than a few hours.
Does chill mean put in the refrigerator?
Refers to food that is thoroughly cooled in a refrigerator compartment, but is not frozen. Proper chilling of food is usually accomplished within a temperature range of 33°F to 42°F.
Often, these mixing methods are categorized by the baked item you are making, and the degree of mixing used to ensure the best baked good possible.
There are three major mixing methods used in baking which consist of:
- The Muffin Method.
- The Biscuit Method.
- The Creaming Method.
Most cookies are baked at a fairly high temperature for a short time. Why would you double-pan a batch of cookies? To prevent burning the bottoms of the cookies.
Tips for getting that perfect cookie texture
- If you want chewy cookies, add melted butter. Butter is 20 percent water.
- If you want thin, candy-like cookies, add more sugar.
- If you want cakey cookies, add more eggs.
- If you want an open, coarse crumb and craggy top, add baking soda.
What are the primary causes of this? The steam and other hot gasses that were puffing the cookies up either escapes or condenses. Without heat to create more steam, the cookies deflate. You get exactly the same effect with bread, quiches, and other baked goods.
Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don’t overdo it when you’re creaming together the butter and sugar.
Why Are My Cookies Flat? Mistake: When cookies turn out flat, the bad guy is often butter that is too soft or even melted. This makes cookies spread. The other culprit is too little flour—don’t hold back and make sure you master measuring.
Alexis’s Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies are a supreme example of when to not refrigerate dough. The goal of this particular recipe is to create super thin, super crispy cookies that spread significantly when baking. Refrigerating the dough would prevent these cookies from spreading the way they’re intended to here.
Using lower-moisture sugar (granulated) and fat (vegetable shortening), plus a longer, slower bake than normal, produces light, crunchy cookies. That said, using a combination of butter and vegetable shortening (as in the original recipe), or even using all butter, will make an acceptably crunchy chocolate chip cookie.
Why Do Cookies Get Hard? Like all baked treats, cookies are subject to getting stale. Over time, the moisture in the cookies evaporates, leaving them stiff and crumbly. It’s the same thing that happens to breads, muffins, and other baked goods.
Hacks To Make Boxed Cookie Mix Taste Homemade
- Use butter instead of margarine or shortening for a homemade taste.
- Powdered milk is the secret ingredient in homemade cookies.
- Swirl in some pure vanilla extract for a homemade flavor.
- Swap vegetable oil with coconut oil for your cookies.
Basically, cookies made with butter spread more and are flatter and crisper if baked long enough. However, they are more flavorful than cookies made with shortening. Cookies made with shortening bake up taller and are more tender, but aren’t as flavorful.
Acidic brown sugar, on the other hand, speeds gluten formation and egg protein coagulation, so the dough sets quickly, making cookies thick and tender/chewy.
Sugars, like fats liquefy in the oven. White sugar will make your cookies crispier while brown sugar contains more moisture and will result in a softer and more chewy cookie. Most chocolate chip cookie recipes call for both sugars.