Does chilling cookie dough really make for a better result?
Emily, by email
“It all depends on what kind of cookie it is,” says Guardian baker Helen Goh. “Let’s say it’s a cookie that you need to stamp out – the dough needs to be firm enough to roll it, but not so firm that you can’t.” That said, the question of whether to fridge or not to fridge is probably most prevalent in the chocolate chip cookie sphere. “There’s a perceived wisdom that chilling helps the dough develop the flavour and caramelisation,” Goh says, “but, to be honest, it also makes the dough a little easier to roll and ensures it bakes evenly, which is worth far more than that slight improvement in flavour.”
Recommended chilling times vary from 30 minutes to overnight, although Goh finds the latter results in a “cakey” cookie: “I’m a real Goldilocks, so I like crisp at the edges with a chewy centre.” On the flip side, if you don’t chill that dough enough and the butter is too soft, the cookies will end up “very thin and crisp. They might be greasy, too, because the dough melts before setting up its structure.”
To ensure that balance of a thicker texture with crisp edges and a soft, gooey centre, Abigail Scheuer, pastry chef and owner of Le Choux in west London, freezes her balled-up cookie dough for at least 24 hours. “The middle of my cookies are more frozen, so the outsides bake first, whereas if you were to bake the cookies straight away, you’d get the same texture across the cookie. They’d also spread more, because the flour hasn’t had enough time to hydrate.”
Chocolate is, of course, also key, and another benefit of Scheuer’s freezing strategy is that the frozen sweet stuff “stays a bit melted” once baked. Plus, you’ll have cookies on demand: “Make a big batch and they’ll keep in the freezer for two to three weeks [for ultimate flavour and freshness], or even longer.”
Making shortbread? As a general rule of thumb, Goh says it’s best to chill the dough in phases: “You can’t stamp out a very soft dough, because, by the time you lift the cookie cutter, the dough will be misshapen.” Chill it just enough to allow you to roll it, then stamp out your chosen shapes and return the dough to the fridge until firm all over: “Use your senses; it’s not simply a case of setting a timer.” If you were to chill a big block of dough instead, meanwhile, the edges would be firm and the insides soft, Goh adds, so “you’d get a bit of melting, and you want the biscuits to retain their shape”.
The fridge is also your friend on the savoury side. For Goh’s Lao Gan Ma biscuits, from her book Baking and the Meaning of Life, the dough laced with chilli crisp and salty parmesan is a soft one, but requires rolling into a log immediately. “It will be too soft to form a perfect cylinder,” Goh says, so she pops it in the fridge until it’s firm enough to achieve that desired shape. Not too firm, not too soft, but just right.
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